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Linux PCMCIA HOWTO
David Hinds, dahinds@users.sourceforge.net.
v2.118, 06 December 2003
This document describes how to install and use PCMCIA Card Services
for Linux, and answers some frequently asked questions. The latest
version of this document can always be found at <http://pcmcia-
cs.sourceforge.net>.
______________________________________________________________________
Table of Contents
1. General information and hardware requirements
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Copyright notice and disclaimer
1.3 What is the latest version, and where can I get it?
1.4 What systems are supported?
1.5 What cards are supported?
1.6 When will my favorite (unsupported) card become supported?
1.7 Mailing lists and other information sources
2. Compilation and installation
2.1 Prerequisites and kernel setup
2.2 Kernel PCMCIA support
2.3 Installation
2.4 Startup options
2.4.1 Card readers for desktop systems
2.5 System resource settings
2.5.1 PowerBook specific settings
2.6 Notes about specific Linux distributions
2.6.1 Debian
2.6.2 Red Hat, Caldera, Mandrake
2.6.3 Slackware
2.6.4 SuSE
3. Resolving installation and configuration problems
3.1 Base PCMCIA kernel modules do not load
3.2 Some client driver modules do not load
3.3 ISA interrupt scan failures
3.4 IO port scan failures
3.5 Memory probe failures
3.6 Failure to detect card insertions and removals
3.7 Interrupt delivery problems
3.8 System resource starvation
3.9 Resource conflict only with two cards inserted
3.10 Device configuration does not complete
4. Usage and features
4.1 Tools for configuring and monitoring PCMCIA devices
4.1.1 The cardmgr configuration daemon
4.1.2 The socket status file, stab
4.1.3 The cardctl and cardinfo utilities
4.1.4 Inserting and ejecting cards
4.1.5 Card Services and Advanced Power Management
4.1.6 Shutting down the PCMCIA system
4.2 Overview of the PCMCIA configuration scripts
4.3 PCMCIA network adapters
4.3.1 Network device parameters
4.3.2 Comments about specific cards
4.3.3 Diagnosing problems with network adapters
4.4 PCMCIA serial and modem devices
4.4.1 Serial device parameters
4.4.2 Comments about specific cards
4.4.3 Diagnosing problems with serial devices
4.5 PCMCIA parallel port devices
4.5.1 Parallel device parameters
4.5.2 Diagnosing problems with parallel port devices
4.6 PCMCIA SCSI adapters
4.6.1 SCSI device parameters
4.6.2 Comments about specific cards
4.6.3 Diagnosing problems with SCSI adapters
4.7 PCMCIA memory cards
4.7.1 Memory device parameters
4.7.2 Using linear flash memory cards
4.8 PCMCIA ATA/IDE card drives
4.8.1 ATA/IDE fixed-disk device parameters
4.8.2 Diagnosing problems with ATA/IDE adapters
4.9 Multifunction cards
5. Advanced topics
5.1 Resource allocation for PCMCIA devices
5.2 PCI interrupt configuration problems and solutions
5.2.1 An overview of PCI interrupt routing issues
5.2.2 CardBus bridge is not detected by the PCI BIOS
5.2.3 PCI interrupt delivery problems
5.2.4 No PCI interrupt assignment; valid routing table
5.2.5 No PCI interrupt assignment; unknown interrupt router
5.2.6 No PCI interrupt assignment; no routing table
5.3 How can I have separate device setups for home and work?
5.4 Booting from a PCMCIA device
5.4.1 The pcinitrd helper script
5.4.2 Creating an initrd boot floppy
5.4.3 Installing an initrd image on a non-Linux drive
6. Dealing with unsupported cards
6.1 Configuring unrecognized cards
6.2 Adding support for an NE2000-compatible ethernet card
6.3 PCMCIA floppy interface cards
7. Debugging tips and programming information
7.1 Submitting useful problem reports
7.2 Interpreting kernel trap reports
7.3 Low level PCMCIA debugging aids
7.4 /proc/bus/pccard
7.5 Writing Card Services drivers for new cards
7.6 Guidelines for PCMCIA client driver authors
7.7 Guidelines for Linux distribution maintainers
______________________________________________________________________
1. General information and hardware requirements
1.1. Introduction
Card Services for Linux is a complete PCMCIA or ``PC Card'' support
package. It includes a set of loadable kernel modules that implement
a version of the Card Services applications program interface, a set
of client drivers for specific cards, and a card manager daemon that
can respond to card insertion and removal events, loading and
unloading drivers on demand. It supports ``hot swapping'' of most
card types, so cards can be safely inserted and ejected at any time.
This software is a work in progress. It contains bugs, and should be
used with caution. I'll do my best to fix problems that are reported
to me, but if you don't tell me, I may never know. If you use this
code, I hope you will send me your experiences, good or bad!
If you have any suggestions for how this document could be improved,
please let me know (dahinds@users.sourceforge.net).
1.2. Copyright notice and disclaimer
Copyright (c) 1998-2002 David A. Hinds
This document may be reproduced or distributed in any form without my
prior permission. Modified versions of this document, including
translations into other languages, may be freely distributed, provided
that they are clearly identified as such, and this copyright is
included intact.
This document may be included in commercial distributions without my
prior consent. While it is not required, I would like to be informed
of such usage. If you intend to incorporate this document in a
published work, please contact me to make sure you have the latest
available version.
This document is provided ``AS IS'', with no express or implied
warranties. Use the information in this document at your own risk.
1.3. What is the latest version, and where can I get it?
The current major release of Card Services is version 3.2, and minor
updates or bug fixes are numbered 3.2.1, 3.2.2, and so on.
Source code for the latest version is available on the web at
<http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net>, as pcmcia-cs-3.2.?.tar.gz. You
may find more than one release number here. It is up to you to decide
which version is more appropriate, but the CHANGES file will summarize
the most important differences.
Pre-compiled drivers are included with current releases of essentially
all major Linux distributions, including Slackware, Debian, Red Hat,
Caldera, and SuSE, among others. So generally there is no need to
compile the drivers from scratch.
1.4. What systems are supported?
This package should run on almost Intel-based Linux-capable laptop.
It also runs on some Alpha, PowerPC, ARM, and MIPS platforms. Most
common socket controllers are supported. Card docks for desktop
systems should work as long as they use a supported controller, and
are plugged directly into the ISA or PCI bus, as opposed to SCSI-to-
PCMCIA or IDE-to-PCMCIA adapters. The following controllers are
recognized by the supplied socket drivers:
<20> Cirrus Logic (now Basis Communications) PD6710, PD6720, PD6722,
PD6729, PD6730, PD6832
<20> ENE Technology CB1211, CB1225, CB1410, CB1420
<20> Intel i82365sl B, C, and DF steps, 82092AA
<20> O2Micro OZ6729, OZ6730, OZ6812, OZ6832, OZ6833, OZ6836, OZ6860,
OZ6922, OZ6933, OZ6912
<20> Omega Micro 82C365G, 82C092G
<20> Ricoh RF5C296, RF5C396, RL5C465, RL5C466, RL5C475, RL5C476,
RL5C477, RL5C478
<20> SMC 34C90
<20> Texas Instruments PCI1031, PCI1130, PCI1131, PCI1210, PCI1211,
PCI1220, PCI1221, PCI1225, PCI1250A, PCI1251A, PCI1251B, PCI1410,
PCI1410A, PCI1420, PCI1450, PCI1451A, PCI1510, PCI1520, PCI1620,
PCI4410, PCI4410A, PCI4450, PCI4451, PCI4510, PCI4520, PCI7410,
PCI7510, PCI7610
<20> Toshiba ToPIC95, ToPIC97, ToPIC100 (experimental, incomplete)
<20> Vadem VG465, VG468, VG469
<20> VLSI Technologies 82C146, VCF94365
<20> VIA VT83C469
<20> Databook DB86082, DB86082A, DB86084, DB86084A, DB86072, DB86082B
Other controllers that are register compatible with the Intel i82365sl
will generally work, as well.
Due to the rapid pace of technological change for laptop hardware, new
controllers appear frequently, and there may be delays between when a
new model appears on the market, and when driver support becomes
available.
Support for Toshiba's ToPIC bridges was hindered for a long time by a
lack of sufficiently detailed technical documentation. While some
datasheets have been available, a few idiosyncracies of the ToPIC
chips were not adequately explained. Toshiba has given some direct
technical help on some of these issues, and I think the major ones
have been resolved. However, with the introduction of kernel PCMCIA
support in 2.4.* and later kernels, some new Toshiba bugs may have
cropped up in the new socket driver code.
The Motorola 6AHC05GA controller used in some Hyundai laptops is not
supported. The custom host controller in the HP Omnibook 600 is also
unsupported.
1.5. What cards are supported?
The current release includes drivers for a variety of ethernet cards,
a driver for modem and serial port cards, several SCSI adapter
drivers, a driver for ATA/IDE drive cards, and memory card drivers
that should support most SRAM cards and some flash cards. The
SUPPORTED.CARDS file included with each release of Card Services lists
all cards that are known to work in at least one actual system.
The likelihood that a card not on the supported list will work depends
on the type of card. Essentially all modems should work with the
supplied driver. Some network cards may work if they are OEM versions
of supported cards. Other types of IO cards (frame buffers, sound
cards, etc) will not work until someone writes the appropriate
drivers.
1.6. When will my favorite (unsupported) card become supported?
Unfortunately, they usually don't pay me to write device drivers, so
if you would like to have a driver for your favorite card, you are
probably going to have to do at least some of the work. Ideally, I'd
like to work towards a model like the Linux kernel, where I would be
responsible mainly for the ``core'' driver code and other authors
would contribute and maintain client drivers for specific cards. The
SUPPORTED.CARDS file mentions some cards for which driver work is
currently in progress. I will try to help where I can, but be warned
that debugging kernel device drivers by email is not particularly
effective.
1.7. Mailing lists and other information sources
The Linux PCMCIA information page is at <http://pcmcia-
cs.sourceforge.net>, and has bug tracking, support and feature
requests, and a variety of PCMCIA related message forums. Users can
request email notification of new responses to particular questions,
or notification for all new messages in a given category. I hope that
this will become a useful repository of information, for questions
that go beyond the scope of the HOWTO.
The Linux Laptop Page at <http://www.linux-on-laptops.com> has links
to a vast number of sites that have information about configuring
specific types of laptops for Linux. There is also a searchable
database of system configuration information, and pointers to a
variety of laptop-related mailing lists.
2. Compilation and installation
2.1. Prerequisites and kernel setup
Before starting, you should think about whether you really need to
compile the PCMCIA package yourself. All common Linux distributions
come with pre-compiled driver packages. Generally, you only need to
install the drivers from scratch if you need a new feature of the
current drivers, or if you've updated and/or reconfigured your kernel
in a way that is incompatible with the drivers included with your
Linux distribution. While compiling the package is not technically
difficult, it does require some general Linux familiarity.
The following things should be installed on your system before you
begin:
<20> A 2.0, 2.2, 2.4, or 2.6 series kernel source tree.
<20> An appropriate set of module utilities.
<20> (Optional) the ``XForms'' X11 user interface toolkit.
You need to have a complete linux source tree for your kernel, not
just an up-to-date kernel image. The driver modules contain some
references to kernel source files. While you may want to build a new
kernel to remove unnecessary drivers, installing PCMCIA does not
require you to do so.
Current ``stable'' kernel sources and patches are available from
<ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4>. Current module
utilities can be found in the same locations.
In the Linux kernel source tree, the Documentation/Changes file
describes the versions of all sorts of other system components that
are required for that kernel release. You may want to check through
this and verify that your system is up to date, especially if you have
updated your kernel. If you are using a development kernel, be sure
that you are using the right combination of shared libraries and
module tools.
On x86 based systems, if you plan to use 16-bit PC Card devices, you
should also enable CONFIG_ISA, for recent kernels. These cards behave
much like ISA devices, and the PCMCIA drivers use CONFIG_ISA to judge
whether a platform supports ISA bus interrupts.
When configuring your kernel, if you plan on using a PCMCIA ethernet
card, you should turn on networking support but turn off the normal
Linux network card drivers, including the ``pocket and portable
adapters''. The PCMCIA network card drivers are all implemented as
loadable modules. Any drivers compiled into your kernel will only
waste space.
If you want to use SLIP, PPP, or PLIP, you do need to either configure
your kernel with these enabled, or use the loadable module versions of
these drivers.
In order to use a PCMCIA token ring adapter, your kernel should be
configured with ``Token Ring driver support'' (CONFIG_TR) enabled,
though you should leave CONFIG_IBMTR off.
If you want to use a PCMCIA IDE adapter, your kernel should be
configured with CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDE_PCMCIA enabled, for 2.0.* kernels.
Newer kernels do not require a special configuration setting.
If you will be using a PCMCIA SCSI adapter, then enable CONFIG_SCSI
when configuring your kernel. Also, enable any top level drivers
(SCSI disk, tape, cdrom, generic) that you expect to use. All low-
level drivers for particular host adapters should be disabled, as they
will just take up space.
This package includes an X-based card status utility called cardinfo.
This utility is based on a freely distributed user interface toolkit
called the XForms Library. This library is available as a separate
package with most Linux distributions. If you would like to build
cardinfo, you should install XForms and all the normal X header files
and libraries before configuring the PCMCIA package. This tool is
completely optional.
2.2. Kernel PCMCIA support
PCMCIA driver support is included in the 2.4 and later linux kernel
trees. While it shares most of the same code with the standalone
PCMCIA driver package, there are some important differences. The
kernel PCMCIA support is also still evolving.
The kernel PCMCIA code has the same functionality as the driver side
of the pcmcia-cs package. It does not eliminate the need to install
the pcmcia-cs package, since it requires the same user tools (cardmgr,
cardctl, /etc/pcmcia/* files). The drivers in pcmcia-cs can still be
built for 2.4 kernels, so you have a choice of using either the in-
kernel PCMCIA drivers, or the drivers included in pcmcia-cs. With 2.5
and later kernels, the standalone drivers cannot be used.
To use the kernel PCMCIA drivers, configure the kernel with
CONFIG_HOTPLUG, CONFIG_PCMCIA, and usually CONFIG_CARDBUS enabled. On
x86 based systems, CONFIG_ISA should also be enabled. The drivers can
either be built into the kernel or built as modules. PCMCIA client
driver options are listed in their regular driver categories; thus,
PCMCIA network drivers are in a submenu of network drivers, and PCMCIA
serial drivers are in a submenu of character drivers.
In the standalone pcmcia-cs drivers, the i82365 module supports both
ISA-to-PCMCIA, PCI-to-PCMCIA, and PCI-to-CardBus bridges. The CardBus
socket driver in the 2.4 tree is the yenta_socket driver. It is
selected by the CONFIG_CARDBUS option. In your PCMCIA startup
options, this driver should be specified in place of the i82365
driver. The kernel version of the i82365 driver, selected by
CONFIG_I82365, only supports ISA-to-PCMCIA bridges. PCI-to-PCMCIA
bridges that are not CardBus capable, like the Cirrus PD6729, are not
supported at all by the kernel PCMCIA drivers.
When compiling the standalone PCMCIA package, the Configure script
decides whether or not to build any kernel modules by looking at the
value of the CONFIG_PCMCIA option in your kernel configuration. If
CONFIG_PCMCIA is enabled, then by default, no driver components are
built. If CONFIG_PCMCIA is disabled, then all the modules will be
built and installed. It is safe to compile the user tools (cardmgr,
cardctl, etc) in a PCMCIA package whose version number differs from
the PCMCIA version number in the kernel source tree. The kernel
PCMCIA header files take precedence over the ones included in the
PCMCIA package, if CONFIG_PCMCIA is enabled.
2.3. Installation
Here is a synopsis of the installation process:
<20> Unpack pcmcia-cs-3.2.?.tar.gz in /usr/src.
<20> Run ``make config'' in the new pcmcia-cs-3.2.? directory.
<20> Run ``make all'', then ``make install''.
<20> Customize the startup script and the option files in /etc/pcmcia
for your site, if needed.
If you plan to install any contributed client drivers not included in
the core PCMCIA distribution, unpack each of them in the top-level
directory of the PCMCIA source tree. Then follow the normal build
instructions. The extra drivers will be compiled and installed
automatically.
Running ``make config'' prompts for a few configuration options, and
checks out your system to verify that it satisfies all prerequisites
for installing PCMCIA support. In most cases, you'll be able to just
accept all the default configuration options. Be sure to carefully
check the output of this command in case there are problems. The
following options are available:
Linux kernel source directory?
This is the location of the source tree for the kernel you want
to use with PCMCIA. Often this is /usr/src/linux, but the
default location depends on what Linux distribution you're using
(or on where you've chosen to place your kernel source tree).
Build 'trusting' versions of card utilities?
Some of the support utilities (cardctl and cardinfo) can be
compiled either in ``safe'' or ``trusting'' forms. The ``safe''
forms prevent non-root users from modifying card configurations.
The ``trusting'' forms permit ordinary users to issue commands
to suspend and resume cards, reset cards, and change the current
configuration scheme. The default is to build the safe forms.
Include 32-bit (CardBus) card support?
This option must be selected if you wish to use 32-bit CardBus
cards. It is not required for CardBus bridge support, if you
only plan to use 16-bit PC Cards.
Include PnP BIOS resource checking?
This builds additional code into the PCMCIA core module to
communicate with a system's PnP BIOS to obtain resource
information for built-in ``motherboard'' devices (serial and
parallel ports, sound, etc), to help avoid resource conflicts.
If enabled, some extra resource files will be created under
/proc/bus/pccard, and the lspnp and setpnp tools can be used to
view and manipulate PnP BIOS devices. However, this setting
causes problems on some laptops and is not turned on by default.
Module install directory?
The directory that new kernel modules will be installed into.
Normally this should be the subdirectory of /lib/modules that
matches your kernel version.
How to set kernel-specific options?
There are a few kernel configuration options that affect the
PCMCIA tools. The configuration script can deduce these from
the running kernel (the default and most common case).
Alternatively, if you are compiling for installation on another
machine, it can read the configuration from a kernel source
tree, or each option can be set interactively.
The Configure script can also be executed non-interactively, for
automatic builds or to quickly reconfigure after a kernel update.
Some additional less-frequently-used options can be only be set from
the command line. Running ``Configure --help'' lists all available
options.
Running ``make all'' followed by ``make install'' will build and then
install the kernel modules and utility programs. Kernel modules are
installed under /lib/modules/<version>/pcmcia. The cardmgr and
cardctl programs are installed in /sbin. If cardinfo is built, it is
installed in /usr/bin/X11.
Configuration files will be installed in the /etc/pcmcia directory.
If you are installing over an older version, your old config scripts
will be backed up before being replaced. The saved scripts will be
given an *.O extension.
If you don't know what kind of host controller your system uses, you
can use the pcic_probe utility in the cardmgr/ subdirectory to
determine this. There are several major types: the Databook TCIC-2
type and the Intel i82365SL-compatible type. With the kernel PCMCIA
subsystem, Intel compatible controllers are further subdivided into
ISA-bus 16-bit bridges, and PCI-based CardBus bridges.
In a few cases, the pcic_probe command will be unable to determine
your controller type automatically. If you have a Halikan NBD 486
system, it has a TCIC-2 controller at an unusual location: you'll need
to edit rc.pcmcia to load the tcic module, and also set the PCIC_OPTS
parameter to ``tcic_base=0x02c0''.
On some old pre-PCI systems using Cirrus controllers, including the
NEC Versa M, the BIOS puts the controller in a special suspended state
at system startup time. On these systems, the pcic_probe command will
fail to find any known host controller. If this happens, edit
rc.pcmcia and set PCIC to i82365, and PCIC_OPTS to ``wakeup=1''.
2.4. Startup options
The PCMCIA startup script recognizes several groups of startup
options, set via environment variables. Multiple options should be
separated by spaces and enclosed in quotes. Placement of startup
options depends on the Linux distribution used. They may be placed
directly in the startup script, or they may be kept in a separate
option file. See the ``Notes about specific Linux distributions'' for
specifics. The following variables can be set:
PCMCIA
This variable specifies whether PCMCIA support should be started
up, or not. If it is set to anything other than ``yes'', then
the startup script will be disabled.
PCIC
This identifies the PC Card Interface Controller driver module.
There are several options: ``tcic'', ``i82365'', and (for the
kernel PCMCIA subsystem) ``yenta_socket''. Virtually all
current controllers are in the ``i82365'' group for the
standalone drivers, and ``yenta_socket'' for the kernel drivers.
This is the only mandatory option setting.
PCIC_OPTS
This specifies options for the PCIC module. Some host
controllers have optional features that may or may not be
implemented in a particular system. In some cases, it is
impossible for the socket driver to detect if these features are
implemented. See the corresponding man page for a complete
description of the available options.
CORE_OPTS
This specifies options for the pcmcia_core module, which
implements the core PC Card driver services. See ``man
pcmcia_core'' for more information.
CARDMGR_OPTS
This specifies options to be passed to the cardmgr daemon. See
``man cardmgr'' for more information.
SCHEME
If set, then the PC Card configuration scheme will be
initialized to this at driver startup time. See the ``Overview
of the PCMCIA configuration scripts'' for a discussion of
schemes.
The low level socket drivers, tcic and i82365, have various bus timing
parameters that may need to be adjusted for certain systems with
unusual bus clocking. Symptoms of timing problems can include card
recognition problems, lock-ups under heavy loads, high error rates, or
poor device performance. Only certain host bridges have adjustable
timing parameters: check the corresponding man page to see what
options are available for your controller. Here is a brief summary:
<20> ISA-bus Cirrus controllers have numerous configurable timing
parameters. The most important seems to be the cmd_time flag,
which determines the length of PCMCIA bus cycles. Fast 486 systems
(i.e., DX4-100) seem to often benefit from increasing this from 6
(the default) to 12 or 16.
<20> The Cirrus PD6729 PCI controller has the fast_pci flag, which
should be set if the PCI bus speed is greater than 25 MHz.
<20> For Vadem VG-468 controllers, the async_clock flag changes the
relative clocking of PCMCIA bus and host bus cycles. Setting this
flag adds extra wait states to some operations. However, I have
yet to hear of a laptop that needs this.
<20> The pcmcia_core module has the cis_speed parameter for changing the
memory speed used for accessing a card's Card Information Structure
(CIS). On some systems, increasing this parameter (i.e., slowing
down card accesses) may fix card recognition problems.
<20> Another pcmcia_core parameter, io_speed, can be used to slow down
accesses to IO cards. It may help in certain cases with systems
that have out-of-spec PCMCIA bus timing.
<20> This is not a timing issue, but if you have more than one ISA-to-
PCMCIA controller in your system or extra sockets in a laptop
docking station, the i82365 module should be loaded with the
extra_sockets parameter set to 1. This should not be necessary for
detection of PCI-to-PCMCIA or PCI-to-CardBus bridges.
Here are some timing settings for a few old systems:
<20> On the ARM Pentium-90 or Midwest Micro Soundbook Plus, use
``freq_bypass=1 cmd_time=8''.
<20> On a Compaq Presario 1220, try ``setup_time=1''.
<20> On a Midwest Micro Soundbook Elite, use ``cmd_time=12''.
<20> On a Gateway Liberty, try ``cmd_time=16''.
<20> On a Samsung SENS 810, use ``fast_pci=1''.
2.4.1. Card readers for desktop systems
While almost all PCMCIA card readers and card docks work fine under
Linux, some require special startup options because they do not behave
exactly like laptop PCMCIA bridges. PCI card readers, in particular,
may handle interrupts differently. Some of the following parameter
settings are only available for the i82365 module in the standalone
drivers; the kernel's yenta_socket driver is not configurable.
<20> The Linksys ProConnect PCMRDWR and Antec DataChute ISA card readers
are ``ISA Plug and Play'' devices. To use these, you must first
activate them with the Linux isapnp tools. See the man pages for
pnpdump and isapnp for more information.
<20> For Chase CardPORT and Altec ISA card readers using the Cirrus
PD6722 ISA-to-PCMCIA bridge, the i82365 driver should be loaded
with a ``has_ring=0'' parameter to prevent irq 15 conflicts.
<20> For Elan P-series PCI card readers based on the Cirrus PD6729 PCI-
to-PCMCIA bridge chip, the i82365 driver requires a ``irq_mode=1''
parameter.
<20> For the Sycard PCChost1200 host adapter, the i82365 driver requires
a ``p2cclk=1'' parameter.
<20> For the Alex Electronics PCICBI host adapter based on the TI 1221
bridge, the i82365 driver requires ``p2cclk=1 irq_mode=0'' as well
as PCMCIA driver release 3.1.23 or later.
<20> With SCM Microsystems SBP series PCI card readers (which are also
being distributed with Lucent WaveLAN IEEE cards), and for the
Synchrotech PCM-CR-PC2IF and PCM-CR-PC2IR, it is necessary to
specify ``irq_mode=0'' for the i82365 module, to force use of PCI
interrupts.
<20> For the ActionTec PC 750 card reader, and for the Antec Datachute
PCI card reader, the i82365 driver requires a ``irq_list=0''
parameter, to indicate that ISA interrupts are unavailable.
<20> The PLX Technologies PCI9052 (also sold as the Linksys WDT11) is
not a general purpose PCMCIA card reader at all: it is a PCI
interface card for use with certain wireless adapters, that makes
them look like ordinary PCI devices. These devices are not
supported.
2.5. System resource settings
Card Services should automatically avoid allocating IO ports and
interrupts already in use by other standard devices. It will also
attempt to detect conflicts with unknown devices, but this is not
completely reliable. In some cases, you may need to explicitly
exclude resources for a device in /etc/pcmcia/config.opts.
Here are some resource settings for specific laptop types. View this
list with suspicion: it may give useful hints for solving problems,
but it is inevitably out of date and certainly contains mistakes.
Corrections and additions are welcome.
<20> On the AMS SoundPro, exclude irq 10.
<20> On some AMS TravelPro 5300 models, use memory 0xc8000-0xcffff.
<20> On the BMX 486DX2-66, exclude irq 5, irq 9.
<20> On the Chicony NB5, use memory 0xda000-0xdffff.
<20> On the Compaq Presario 900Z, exclude port 0x3b0-0x3bb.
<20> On the Compaq Presario 1020, exclude port 0x2f8-0x2ff, irq 3, irq
5.
<20> On the Compaq Presario 2120EA, exclude irq 10.
<20> On the Dell Inspiron 7000, exclude irq 3, irq 5.
<20> On the Dell Inspiron 8000, exclude port 0x800-0x8ff.
<20> On the Fujitsu C series, exclude port 0x200-0x27f.
<20> On the HP Omnibook 4000C, exclude port 0x300-0x30f.
<20> On the HP Omnibook 4100, exclude port 0x220-0x22f.
<20> On the IBM ThinkPad 380, and maybe the 385 and 600 series, exclude
port 0x230-0x233, and irq 5.
<20> On IBM ThinkPad 600 and 770 models with internal modems, exclude
port 0x2f8-0x2ff.
<20> On the IBM ThinkPad 600E and 770Z, change the high memory window to
0x60000000-0x60ffffff.
<20> On the Micron Millenia Transport, exclude irq 5, irq 9.
<20> On the NEC Versa M, exclude irq 9, port 0x2e0-2ff.
<20> On the NEC Versa P/75, exclude irq 5, irq 9.
<20> On the NEC Versa S, exclude irq 9, irq 12.
<20> On the NEC Versa 6000 series, exclude port 0x2f8-0x33f, irq 9, irq
10.
<20> On the NEC Versa SX, exclude port 0x300-0x31f.
<20> On the ProStar 9200, Altima Virage, and Acquiline Hurricane
DX4-100, exclude irq 5, port 0x330-0x35f. Maybe use memory
0xd8000-0xdffff.
<20> On the Siemens Nixdorf SIMATIC PG 720C, use memory 0xc0000-0xcffff,
port 0x300-0x3bf.
<20> On the TI TravelMate 5000, use memory 0xd4000-0xdffff.
<20> On the Toshiba Satellite 4030CDS, exclude irq 9.
<20> On the Toshiba T4900 CT, exclude irq 5, port 0x2e0-0x2e8, port
0x330-0x338.
<20> On the Toshiba Tecra 8000, exclude irq 3, irq 5, irq 9.
<20> On the Twinhead 5100, HP 4000, Sharp PC-8700 and PC-8900, exclude
irq 9 (sound), irq 12.
<20> On an MPC 800 Series, exclude irq 5, port 0x300-0x30f for the CD-
ROM.
2.5.1. PowerBook specific settings
On PowerPC based PowerBook systems, the default system resources in
/etc/pcmcia/config.opts file are no good at all. Replace all the IO
port and window definitions with something like:
include port 0x100-0x4ff, port 0x1000-0x17ff
include memory 0x80000000-0x80ffffff
2.6. Notes about specific Linux distributions
This section is incomplete. Corrections and additions are welcome.
2.6.1. Debian
Debian uses a System V boot script arrangement. The PCMCIA startup
script is installed as /etc/init.d/pcmcia. New packages use
/etc/default/pcmcia for startup options; older versions used
/etc/pcmcia.conf for this purpose. Debian's syslog configuration will
place kernel messages in /var/log/messages and cardmgr messages in
/var/log/daemon.log.
Debian distributes the PCMCIA system in two packages: the ``pcmcia-
cs'' package contains cardmgr and other tools, man pages, and
configuration scripts; and the ``pcmcia-modules'' package contains the
kernel driver modules.
Starting with 3.1.25, a clean PCMCIA install will identify Debian
systems and create a special network.opts file that, in the absence of
other network configuration settings, uses Debian's ifup and ifdown
commands to configure a network card based on settings in
/etc/network/interfaces.
2.6.2. Red Hat, Caldera, Mandrake
These distributions use a System V boot script organization. The
PCMCIA startup script is installed as /etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia, and
boot options are kept in /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia. Beware that
installing the Red Hat package may install a default boot option file
that has PCMCIA disabled. To enable PCMCIA, the ``PCMCIA'' variable
should be set to ``yes''. Red Hat's default syslogd configuration
will record all interesting messages in /var/log/messages.
Red Hat's PCMCIA package contains a replacement for the network setup
script, /etc/pcmcia/network, which meshes with the Red Hat linuxconf
configuration system. This is convenient for the case where just one
network adapter is used, with one set of network parameters, but does
not have the full flexibility of the regular PCMCIA network script.
Compiling and installing a clean PCMCIA source distribution will
overwrite the network script, breaking the link to the Red Hat tools.
If you prefer using the Red Hat tools, either use only Red Hat RPM's,
or replace /etc/pcmcia/network.opts with the following:
if [ -f /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-$2 ] ; then
start_fn () {
. /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-$1
if [ "$ONBOOT" = "yes" ] ; then /sbin/ifup $1 ; fi
}
stop_fn () {
/sbin/ifdown $1
}
fi
Starting with the 3.1.22 release, the PCMCIA installation script will
automatically append a variant of this to the default network.opts
file, so this problem should no longer be an issue.
If you do use linuxconf (or netconf) to configure your network
interface, leave the ``kernel module'', ``I/O port'', and ``irq''
parameters blank. Setting these parameters may interfere with proper
operation of the PCMCIA subsystem.
At boot time, when the Red Hat network subsystem starts up, it may say
``Delaying eth0 initialization'' and ``[FAILED]''. This is actually
not a failure: it means that this network interface will not be
initialized until after the PCMCIA network device is configured.
Red Hat bundles their slightly modified PCMCIA source distribution
with their kernel sources, rather than as a separate source package.
When preparing to build a new set of PCMCIA drivers, you will
generally want to install Red Hat's kernel-source RPM (kernel-
source-*.i386.rpm), and not the kernel SRPM (kernel-*.src.rpm). The
SRPM is tailored for building their kernel RPM files, which is not
exactly what you want. With Red Hat 7.0, the kernel-source RPM also
includes a mis-configured PCMCIA source tree; if you want to use it,
delete their PCMCIA config.out file and re-do "make config".
2.6.3. Slackware
Slackware uses a BSD boot script arrangement. The PCMCIA startup
script is installed as /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia, and boot options are
specified in rc.pcmcia itself. The PCMCIA startup script is invoked
from /etc/rc.d/rc.S.
2.6.4. SuSE
SuSE uses a System V init script arrangement, with init scripts stored
under /etc/init.d. The PCMCIA startup script is installed as
/etc/init.d/pcmcia, and startup options are kept in /etc/rc.config.
Before release 7.0, init scripts were kept under /sbin/init.d. In
early SuSE releases (pre-5.3), the PCMCIA startup script was somewhat
limited and did not allow PCMCIA startup variables to be overridden
from the lilo boot prompt.
SuSE 8.0 includes both the standalone PCMCIA modules, and the 2.4
kernel PCMCIA subsystem modules. A new variable, PCMCIA_SYSTEM, is
available in /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia to choose between these. It can be
set to either ``kernel'' or ``external''.
To look up current PCMCIA issues in SuSE's support database, go to
<http://sdb.suse.de/cgi-bin/sdbsearch_en.cgi?stichwort=PCMCIA>.
3. Resolving installation and configuration problems
This section describes some of the most common failure modes for the
PCMCIA subsystem. Try to match your symptoms against the examples.
This section only describes general failures that are not specific to
a particular client driver or type of card.
Before trying to diagnose a problem, you have to know where your
system log is kept (see ``Notes about specific Linux distributions'').
You should also be familiar with basic diagnostic tools like dmesg and
lsmod. Also, be aware that most driver components (including all the
kernel modules) have their own individual man pages.
In 3.1.15 and later releases, the debug-tools subdirectory of the
PCMCIA source tree has a few scripts to help diagnose some of the most
common configuration problems. The test_setup script checks your
PCMCIA installation for completeness. The test_network and test_modem
scripts will try to diagnose problems with PCMCIA network and modem
cards. These scripts can be particularly helpful if you are
unfamiliar with Linux and are not sure how to approach a problem.
Try to define your problem as narrowly as possible. If you have
several cards, try each card in isolation, and in different
combinations. Try cold Linux boots, versus warm boots from Windows.
Compare booting with cards inserted, versus inserting cards after
boot. If you normally use your laptop docked, try it undocked. And
sometimes, two sockets will behave differently.
For debugging problems in the device configuration scripts, it may be
useful to start cardmgr with the ``-v'' option. With a 3.1.23 or
later PCMCIA package, this will cause most important script actions to
be recorded in the system log.
It is nearly impossible to debug driver problems encountered when
attempting to install Linux via a PCMCIA device. Even if you can
identify the problem based on its symptoms, installation disks are
difficult to modify, especially without access to a running Linux
system. Customization of installation disks is completely dependent
on the choice of Linux distribution, and is beyond the scope of this
document. In general, the best course of action is to install Linux
using some other means, obtain the latest drivers, and then debug the
problem if it persists.
3.1. Base PCMCIA kernel modules do not load
Symptoms:
<20> Kernel version mismatch errors are reported when the PCMCIA startup
script runs.
<20> After startup, lsmod does not show any PCMCIA modules.
<20> cardmgr reports ``no pcmcia driver in /proc/devices'' in the system
log.
Kernel modules contain version information that is checked against the
current kernel when a module is loaded. The type of checking depends
on the setting of the CONFIG_MODVERSIONS kernel option. If this is
false, then the kernel version number is compiled into each module,
and insmod checks this for a match with the running kernel. If
CONFIG_MODVERSIONS is true, then each symbol exported by the kernel is
given a sort of checksum. These codes are all compared against the
corresponding codes compiled into a module. The intent was for this
to make modules less version-dependent, because the checksums would
only change if a kernel interface changed, and would generally stay
the same across minor kernel updates. In practice, the checksums have
turned out to be even more restrictive, because many kernel interfaces
depend on compile-time kernel option settings. Also, the checksums
turned out to be an excessively pessimistic judge of compatibility.
The practical upshot of this is that kernel modules are closely tied
to both the kernel version, and the setting of many kernel
configuration options. Generally, a set of modules compiled for one
2.2.19 kernel will not load against some other 2.2.19 kernel unless
special care is taken to ensure that the two were built with similar
configurations. This makes distribution of precompiled kernel modules
a tricky business.
You have several options:
<20> If you obtained precompiled drivers as part of a Linux
distribution, verify that you are using an unmodified kernel as
supplied with that distribution. If you intend to use precompiled
modules, you generally must stick with the corresponding kernel.
<20> If you have reconfigured or upgraded your kernel, you will probably
need to compile and install the PCMCIA package from scratch. This
is easily done if you already have the kernel source tree
installed. See ``Compilation and installation'' for detailed
instructions.
<20> In some cases, incompatibilities in other system components can
prevent correct loading of kernel modules. If you have upgraded
your own kernel, pay attention to the ``minimal requirements'' for
module utilities and binutils listed in the Documentation/Changes
file in the kernel source code tree.
3.2. Some client driver modules do not load
Symptoms:
<20> The base modules (pcmcia_core, ds, i82365) load correctly.
<20> Inserting a card gives a high beep + low beep pattern.
<20> cardmgr reports version mismatch errors in the system log.
Some of the driver modules require kernel services that may or may not
be present, depending on kernel configuration. For instance, the SCSI
card drivers require that the kernel be configured with SCSI support,
and the network drivers require a networking kernel. If a kernel
lacks a necessary feature, insmod may report undefined symbols and
refuse to load a particular module. Note that insmod error messages do
not distinguish between version mismatch errors and missing symbol
errors.
Specifically:
<20> The serial client driver serial_cs requires the kernel serial
driver to be enabled with CONFIG_SERIAL. This driver may be built
as a module.
<20> Support for multiport serial cards or multifunction cards that
include serial or modem devices requires CONFIG_SERIAL_SHARE_IRQ to
be enabled.
<20> The SCSI client drivers require that CONFIG_SCSI be enabled, along
with the appropriate top level driver options (CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SD,
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SR, etc for 2.2 and later kernels). These may be
built as modules.
<20> The network client drivers require that CONFIG_INET is enabled.
Kernel networking support cannot be compiled as a module.
<20> The token-ring client requires that the kernel be compiled with
CONFIG_TR enabled.
There are two ways to proceed:
<20> Rebuild your kernel with the necessary features enabled.
<20> If the features have been compiled as modules, then modify
/etc/pcmcia/config to preload these modules.
The /etc/pcmcia/config file can specify that additional modules need
to be loaded for a particular client. For example, for the serial
driver, one would use:
device "serial_cs"
class "serial" module "misc/serial", "serial_cs"
Module paths are specified relative to the top-level module directory
for the current kernel version; if no relative path is given, then the
path defaults to the pcmcia subdirectory.
3.3. ISA interrupt scan failures
Symptoms:
<20> The system locks up when the PCMCIA drivers are loaded, even with
no cards present.
<20> The system log shows a successful host controller probe just before
the lock-up, but does not show interrupt probe results.
After identifying the host controller type, the socket driver probes
for free ISA bus interrupts. The probe involves programming the
controller for each apparently free interrupt, then generating a
``soft'' interrupt, to see if the interrupt can be detected correctly.
In some cases, probing a particular interrupt can interfere with
another system device.
The reason for the probe is to identify interrupts which appear to be
free (i.e., are not reserved by any other Linux device driver), yet
are either not physically wired to the host controller, or are
connected to another device that does not have a driver.
In the system log, a successful probe might look like:
Intel PCIC probe:
TI 1130 CardBus at mem 0x10211000, 2 sockets
...
ISA irqs (scanned) = 5,7,9,10 status change on irq 10
There are two ways to proceed:
<20> The ISA interrupt probe can be restricted to a list of interrupts
using the irq_list parameter for the socket drivers. For example,
``irq_list=5,9,10'' would limit the scan to three interrupts. All
16-bit PCMCIA devices will be restricted to using these interrupts
(assuming they pass the probe). You may need to use trial and
error to find out which interrupts can be safely probed.
<20> The interrupt probe can be disabled entirely by loading the socket
driver with the ``do_scan=0'' option. In this case, a default
interrupt list will be used, which just avoids interrupts already
allocated for other devices.
In either case, the probe options can be specified using the PCIC_OPTS
definition in the PCMCIA startup script, for example:
PCIC_OPTS="irq_list=5,9,10"
It should be noted that /proc/interrupts is completely useless when it
comes to diagnosing interrupt probe problems. The probe is sensible
enough to never attempt to use an interrupt that is already in use by
another Linux driver. So, the PCMCIA drivers are already using all
the information in /proc/interrupts. Depending on system design, an
inactive device can still occupy an interrupt and cause trouble if it
is probed for PCMCIA.
3.4. IO port scan failures
Symptoms:
<20> The system locks up when cardmgr is first started. For 3.1.24, the
lockup happens even with no cards present; for 3.1.25, a card must
be inserted.
<20> The system log shows a successful host controller probe, including
interrupt probe results, but does not show IO probe results.
<20> In some cases, the IO probe will succeed, but report large numbers
of random exclusions.
When cardmgr processes IO port ranges listed in
/etc/pcmcia/config.opts, the kernel probes these ranges to detect
latent devices that occupy IO space but are not associated with a
Linux driver. The probe is read-only, but in rare cases, reading from
a device may interfere with an important system function, resulting in
a lock-up.
Your system user's guide may include a map of system devices, showing
their IO and memory ranges. These can be explicitly excluded in
config.opts.
Alternatively, if the probe is unreliable on your system, it can be
disabled by setting CORE_OPTS to ``probe_io=0''. In this case, you
should be very careful to specify only genuinely available ranges of
ports in config.opts, instead of using the default settings.
3.5. Memory probe failures
Symptoms:
<20> The core drivers load correctly when no cards are present, with no
errors in the system log.
<20> The system freezes and/or reboots as soon as any card is inserted,
before any beeps are heard.
Or alternately:
<20> All card insertions generate a high beep followed by a low beep.
<20> All cards are identified as ``anonymous memory cards''.
<20> The system log reports that various memory ranges have been
excluded.
The core modules perform a memory scan at the time of first 16-bit
card insertion. This scan can potentially interfere with other memory
mapped devices. Also, pre-3.0.0 driver packages perform a more
aggressive scan than more recent drivers. The memory window is
defined in /etc/pcmcia/config.opts. The default window is large, so
it may help to restrict the scan to a narrower range. Reasonable
ranges to try include 0xd0000-0xdffff, 0xc0000-0xcffff,
0xc8000-0xcffff, or 0xd8000-0xdffff.
If you have DOS or Windows PCMCIA drivers, you may be able to deduce
what memory region those drivers use. Note that DOS memory addresses
are often specified in ``segment'' form, which leaves off the final
hex digit (so an absolute address of 0xd0000 might be given as
0xd000). Be sure to add the extra digit back when making changes to
config.opts.
Changing BIOS settings affecting how devices are mapped can sometimes
be useful. Try changing settings for BIOS shadowing, or "Plug and
Play OS support".
In unusual cases, a memory probe failure can indicate a timing
register setup problem with the host controller. See the ``Startup
options'' section for information about dealing with common timing
problems. This really only applies to ISA-to-PCMCIA bus bridges.
<20> cs: warning: no high memory space available!
CardBus bridges can allocate memory windows outside of the 640KB-1MB
``memory hole'' in the ISA bus architecture. It is generally a good
idea to configure CardBus bridges to use high memory windows, because
these are unlikely to conflict with other devices. Also, CardBus
cards may require large memory windows, which may be difficult or
impossible to fit into low memory. Card Services will preferentially
allocate windows in high memory for CardBus bridges, if both low and
high memory windows are defined in config.opts. The default
config.opts includes several candidate high memory windows, one of
which will work in most cases.
3.6. Failure to detect card insertions and removals
Symptoms:
<20> Cards are detected and configured properly if present at boot time.
<20> The drivers do not respond to insertion and removal events, either
by recording events in the system log, or by beeping.
In most cases, the socket driver (i82365 or tcic) will automatically
probe and select an appropriate interrupt to signal card status
changes. The automatic interrupt probe doesn't work on some Intel-
compatible controllers, including Cirrus chips and the chips used in
some IBM ThinkPads. If a device is inactive at probe time, its
interrupt may also appear to be available. In these cases, the socket
driver may pick an interrupt that is used by another device.
With the i82365 and tcic drivers, the irq_list option can be used to
limit the interrupts that will be tested. This list limits the set of
interrupts that can be used by PCMCIA cards as well as for monitoring
card status changes. The cs_irq option can also be used to explicitly
set the interrupt to be used for monitoring card status changes.
If you can't find an interrupt number that works, there is also a
polled status mode: both i82365 and tcic will accept a
poll_interval=100 option, to poll for card status changes once per
second. This option should also be used if your system has a shortage
of interrupts available for use by PCMCIA cards. Especially for
systems with more than one host controller, there is little point in
dedicating interrupts for monitoring card status changes.
All these options should be set in the PCIC_OPTS= line in either
/etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia or /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia, depending on your site
setup.
3.7. Interrupt delivery problems
Symptoms:
<20> Cards appear to be configured successfully, but don't work.
<20> Serial and modem cards may respond very sluggishly.
<20> Network cards may report ``interrupt(s) dropped'', and/or transmit
timeouts.
The most simple interrupt delivery problems are due to conflicts with
other system devices. These can generally be resolved by excluding
problem interrupts in /etc/pcmcia/config.opts. To test, just exclude
interrupts one by one until either the problem is fixed or you run out
of interrupts. If no interrupts work, then device conflicts are
probably not the problem.
For CardBus bridges, a variety of other interrupt delivery issues may
come into play. For a complete discussion, see ``PCI interrupt
delivery problems''.
3.8. System resource starvation
Symptoms:
<20> When a card is inserted, it is identified correctly but cannot be
configured (high/low beep pattern).
<20> One of the following messages will appear in the system log:
RequestIO: Resource in use
RequestIRQ: Resource in use
RequestWindow: Resource in use
GetNextTuple: No more items
could not allocate nn IO ports for CardBus socket n
could not allocate nnK memory for CardBus socket n
could not allocate interrupt for CardBus socket n
Interrupt starvation often indicates a problem with the interrupt
probe (see ``Interrupt scan failures''). In some cases, the probe
will seem to work, but only report one or two available interrupts.
Check your system log to see if the scan results look sensible.
Disabling the probe and selecting interrupts manually should help.
If the interrupt probe is not working properly, the socket driver may
allocate an interrupt for monitoring card insertions, even when
interrupts are too scarce for this to be a good idea. You can switch
the controller to polled mode by setting PCIC_OPTS to
``poll_interval=100'. Or, if you have a CardBus controller and an
older version of the PCMCIA drivers, try ``pci_csc=1'', which selects
a PCI interrupt (if available) for card status changes.
In some cases, kernel misconfiguration can also produce an apparent
interrupt shortage. On 2.4 and later kernels, if CONFIG_ISA is not
enabled, then the PCMCIA drivers will assume no ISA bus interrupts are
available.
IO port starvation is fairly uncommon, but sometimes happens with
cards that require large, contiguous, aligned regions of IO port
space, or that only recognize a few specific IO port positions. The
default IO port ranges in /etc/pcmcia/config.opts are normally
sufficient, but may be extended. If this is the problem, try
uncommenting the ``include port 0x1000-0x17ff'' line in config.opts.
In rare cases, starvation may indicate that the IO port probe failed
(see ``IO port scan failures'').
Memory starvation is also uncommon with the default memory window
settings in config.opts. CardBus cards may require larger memory
regions than typical 16-bit cards. Since CardBus memory windows can
be mapped anywhere in the host's PCI address space (rather than just
in the 640K-1MB ``hole'' in PC systems), it is helpful to specify
large memory windows in high memory, such as 0xa0000000-0xa0ffffff.
3.9. Resource conflict only with two cards inserted
Symptoms:
<20> Two cards each work fine when used separately.
<20> When both cards are inserted, only one works.
This usually indicates a resource conflict with a system device that
Linux does not know about. PCMCIA devices are dynamically configured,
so, for example, interrupts are allocated as needed, rather than
specifically assigned to particular cards or sockets. Given a list of
resources that appear to be available, cards are assigned resources in
the order they are configured. In this case, the card configured last
is being assigned a resource that in fact is not free.
Check the system log to see what resources are used by the non-working
card. Exclude these in /etc/pcmcia/config.opts, and restart the
cardmgr daemon to reload the resource database.
3.10. Device configuration does not complete
Symptoms:
<20> When a card is inserted, exactly one high beep is heard.
<20> Subsequent card insertions and removals may be ignored.
This indicates that the card was identified successfully, however,
cardmgr has been unable to complete the configuration process for some
reason. The most likely reason is that a step in the card setup
script has blocked. A good example would be the network script
blocking if a network card is inserted with no actual network hookup
present.
To pinpoint the problem, you can manually run a setup script to see
where it is blocking. The scripts are in the /etc/pcmcia directory.
They take two parameters: a device name, and an action. The cardmgr
daemon records the configuration commands in the system log. For
example, if the system log shows that the command ``./network start
eth0'' was the last command executed by cardmgr, the following command
would trace the script:
sh -x /etc/pcmcia/network start eth0
4. Usage and features
4.1. Tools for configuring and monitoring PCMCIA devices
If the modules are all loaded correctly, the output of the lsmod
command should look like the following, when no cards are inserted:
Module Size Used by
ds 5640 2
i82365 15452 2
pcmcia_core 30012 3 [ds i82365]
The system log should also include output from the socket driver
describing the host controller(s) found and the number of sockets
detected.
4.1.1. The cardmgr configuration daemon
The cardmgr daemon is responsible for monitoring PCMCIA sockets,
loading client drivers when needed, and running user-level scripts in
response to card insertions and removals. It records its actions in
the system log, but also uses beeps to signal card status changes.
The tones of the beeps indicate success or failure of particular
configuration steps. Two high beeps indicate that a card was
identified and configured successfully. A high beep followed by a low
beep indicates that a card was identified, but could not be configured
for some reason. One low beep indicates that a card could not be
identified.
The cardmgr daemon configures cards based on a database of known card
types kept in /etc/pcmcia/config. This file describes the various
client drivers, then describes how to identify various cards, and
which driver(s) belong with which cards. The format of this file is
described in the pcmcia(5) man page.
4.1.2. The socket status file, stab
Cardmgr records device information for each socket in
/var/lib/pcmcia/stab. Here is a sample stab listing:
Socket 0: Adaptec APA-1460 SlimSCSI
0 scsi aha152x_cs 0 sda 8 0
0 scsi aha152x_cs 1 scd0 11 0
Socket 1: Serial or Modem Card
1 serial serial_cs 0 ttyS1 5 65
For the lines describing devices, the first field is the socket, the
second is the device class, the third is the driver name, the fourth
is used to number multiple devices associated with the same driver,
the fifth is the device name, and the final two fields are the major
and minor device numbers for this device (if applicable). See the
stab man page for more info.
In 2.4 and later kernels, hot plut PCI drivers for CardBus cards are
not managed by cardmgr; they are managed by the hotplug subsystem.
See <http://linux-hotplug.sourceforge.net> for information about this
facility. When cardmgr sees a card that is owned by a hot plug PCI
driver, it will ignore that card. There will be one beep when these
cards are inserted or ejected, but they will be identified only as a
``CardBus hotplug device'' in the system log and stab file.
4.1.3. The cardctl and cardinfo utilities
The cardctl command can be used to check the status of a socket, or to
see how it is configured. It can also be used to alter the
configuration status of a card. Here is an example of the output of
the ``cardctl config'' command:
Socket 0:
not configured
Socket 1:
Vcc = 5.0, Vpp1 = 0.0, Vpp2 = 0.0
Card type is memory and I/O
IRQ 3 is dynamic shared, level mode, enabled
Speaker output is enabled
Function 0:
Config register base = 0x0800
Option = 0x63, status = 0x08
I/O window 1: 0x0280 to 0x02bf, auto sized
I/O window 2: 0x02f8 to 0x02ff, 8 bit
Or ``cardctl ident'', to get card identification information:
Socket 0:
no product info available
Socket 1:
product info: "LINKSYS", "PCMLM336", "A", "0040052D6400"
manfid: 0x0143, 0xc0ab
function: 0 (multifunction)
The ``cardctl suspend'' and ``cardctl resume'' commands can be used to
shut down a card without unloading its associated drivers. The
``cardctl reset'' command attempts to reset and reconfigure a card.
``cardctl insert'' and ``cardctl eject'' mimic the actions performed
when a card is physically inserted or ejected, including loading or
unloading drivers, and configuring or shutting down devices.
If you are running X, the cardinfo utility produces a graphical
display showing the current status of all PCMCIA sockets, similar in
content to ``cardctl config''. It also provides a graphical interface
to most other cardctl functions.
4.1.4. Inserting and ejecting cards
In theory, you can insert and remove PCMCIA cards at any time.
However, it is a good idea not to eject a card that is currently being
used by an application program. Kernels older than 1.1.77 would often
lock up when serial/modem cards were ejected, but this should be fixed
now.
Some card types cannot be safely hot ejected. Specifically, ATA/IDE
and SCSI interface cards are not hot-swap-safe. This is unlikely to
be fixed, because a complete solution would require significant
changes to the Linux block device model. Also, it is generally not
safe to hot eject CardBus cards of any type. This is likely to
improve gradually as hot swap bugs in the CardBus drivers are found
and fixed. For these card types (IDE, SCSI, CardBus), it is
recommended that you always use ``cardctl eject'' before ejecting.
4.1.5. Card Services and Advanced Power Management
Card Services can be compiled with support for APM (Advanced Power
Management) if you've configured your kernel with APM support. The
APM kernel driver is maintained by Stephen Rothwell
(Stephen.Rothwell@canb.auug.org.au). The apmd daemon is maintained by
Avery Pennarun (apenwarr@worldvisions.ca), with more information
available at <http://www.worldvisions.ca/~apenwarr/apmd/>. The PCMCIA
modules will automatically be configured for APM if a compatible
version is detected on your system.
Whether or not APM is configured, you can use ``cardctl suspend''
before suspending your laptop, and ``cardctl resume'' after resuming,
to cleanly shut down and restart your PCMCIA cards. This will not
work with a modem that is in use, because the serial driver isn't able
to save and restore the modem operating parameters.
APM seems to be unstable on some systems. If you experience trouble
with APM and PCMCIA on your system, try to narrow down the problem to
one package or the other before reporting a bug.
Some drivers, notably the PCMCIA SCSI drivers, cannot recover from a
suspend/resume cycle. When using a PCMCIA SCSI card, always use
``cardctl eject'' prior to suspending the system.
4.1.6. Shutting down the PCMCIA system
To unload the entire PCMCIA package, invoke rc.pcmcia with:
/etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia stop
This script will take several seconds to run, to give all client
drivers time to shut down gracefully. If a device is currently in
use, the shutdown will be incomplete, and some kernel modules may not
be unloaded. To avoid this, use ``cardctl eject'' to shut down all
sockets before invoking rc.pcmcia. The exit status of the cardctl
command will indicate if any sockets could not be shut down.
4.2. Overview of the PCMCIA configuration scripts
The following information applies to cards that are managed by
cardmgr. In 2.4 and later kernels, if the kernel PCMCIA subsystem is
active, then CardBus cards are managed by the hotplug subsystem and
the PCMCIA scripts are not used.
Each PCMCIA device has an associated ``class'' that describes how it
should be configured and managed. Classes are associated with device
drivers in /etc/pcmcia/config. There are currently five IO device
classes (network, SCSI, cdrom, fixed disk, and serial) and two memory
device classes (memory and FTL). For each class, there are two
scripts in /etc/pcmcia: a main configuration script (i.e.,
/etc/pcmcia/scsi for SCSI devices), and an options script (i.e.,
/etc/pcmcia/scsi.opts). The main script for a device will be invoked
to configure that device when a card is inserted, and to shut down the
device when the card is removed. For cards with several associated
devices, the script will be invoked for each device.
The config scripts start by extracting some information about a device
from the stab file. Each script constructs a ``device address'', that
uniquely describes the device it has been asked to configure, in the
ADDRESS shell variable. This is passed to the *.opts script, which
should return information about how a device at this address should be
configured. For some devices, the device address is just the socket
number. For others, it includes extra information that may be useful
in deciding how to configure the device. For example, network devices
pass their hardware ethernet address as part of the device address, so
the network.opts script could use this to select from several
different configurations.
The first part of all device addresses is the current PCMCIA
``scheme''. This parameter is used to support multiple sets of device
configurations based on a single external user-specified variable.
One use of schemes would be to have a ``home'' scheme, and a ``work''
scheme, which would include different sets of network configuration
parameters. The current scheme is selected using the ``cardctl
scheme'' command. The default if no scheme is set is ``default''.
There are a few additional shell variables that can be used in *.opts
files in addition to ADDRESS:
SOCKET, CLASS, DRIVER, INSTANCE, DEVICE, MAJOR, MINOR
These correspond to individual fields from one line in the stab
file. See its man page for details.
PRODID_1, PRODID_2, PRODID_3, PRODID_4, MANFID, FUNCID
These are equivalent to the output of ``cardctl info'' and give
more detailed card identification information.
As the *.opts files are just shell scripts, it is not required that
they follow the form of the examples, which just return settings based
on ADDRESS.
As a general rule, when configuring Linux for a laptop, PCMCIA devices
should only be configured from the PCMCIA device scripts. Do not try
to configure a PCMCIA device the same way you would configure a
permanently attached device. However, some Linux distributions
provide PCMCIA packages that are hooked into those distributions' own
device configuration tools. In that case, some of the following
sections may not apply; ideally, this will be documented by the
distribution maintainers.
4.3. PCMCIA network adapters
Linux ethernet-type network interfaces normally have names like eth0,
eth1, and so on. Token-ring adapters are handled similarly, however
they are named tr0, tr1, and so on. The ifconfig command is used to
view or modify the state of a network interface. A peculiarity of
Linux is that network interfaces do not have corresponding device
files under /dev, so do not be surprised when you do not find them.
When an ethernet card is detected, it will be assigned the first free
interface name, which will normally be eth0. Cardmgr will run the
/etc/pcmcia/network script to configure the interface, which normally
reads network settings from /etc/pcmcia/network.opts. The network and
network.opts scripts will be executed only when your ethernet card is
actually present. If your system has an automatic network
configuration facility, it may or may not be PCMCIA-aware. Consult
the documentation of your Linux distribution and the ``Notes about
specific Linux distributions'' to determine if PCMCIA network devices
should be configured with the automatic tools, or by editing
network.opts.
The device address passed to network.opts consists of four comma-
separated fields: the scheme, the socket number, the device instance,
and the card's hardware ethernet address. The device instance is used
to number devices for cards that have several network interfaces, so
it will usually be 0. If you have several network cards used for
different purposes, one option would be to configure the cards based
on socket position, as in:
case "$ADDRESS" in
*,0,*,*)
# definitions for network card in socket 0
;;
*,1,*,*)
# definitions for network card in socket 1
;;
esac
Alternatively, they could be configured using their hardware
addresses, as in:
case "$ADDRESS" in
*,*,*,00:80:C8:76:00:B1)
# definitions for a D-Link card
;;
*,*,*,08:00:5A:44:80:01)
# definitions for an IBM card
esac
4.3.1. Network device parameters
The following parameters can be defined in network.opts:
IF_PORT
Specifies the ethernet transceiver type, for certain 16-bit
cards that do not autodetect. See ``man ifport'' and ``man mii-
tool'' for more information.
BOOTP
A boolean (y/n) value: indicates if the host's IP address and
routing information should be obtained using the BOOTP protocol,
with bootpc or pump.
DHCP
A boolean (y/n) value: indicates if the host's IP address and
routing information should be obtained from a DHCP server. The
network script first looks for dhcpcd, then dhclient, then pump.
DHCP_HOSTNAME
Specifies a hostname to be passed to dhcpcd or pump, for
inclusion in DHCP messages.
IPADDR
The IP address for this interface.
NETMASK, BROADCAST, NETWORK
Basic network parameters: see the networking HOWTO for more
information.
GATEWAY
The IP address of a gateway for this host's subnet. Packets
with destinations outside this subnet will be routed to this
gateway.
DOMAIN
The local network domain name for this host, to be used in
creating /etc/resolv.conf.
SEARCH
A search list for host name lookup, to be added to
/etc/resolv.conf. DOMAIN and SEARCH are mutually exclusive: see
``man resolver'' for more information.
DNS_1, DNS_2, DNS_3
Host names or IP addresses for nameservers for this interface,
to be added to /etc/resolv.conf
MOUNTS
A space-separated list of NFS mount points to be mounted for
this interface.
IPX_FRAME, IPX_NETNUM
For IPX networks: the frame type and network number, passed to
the ipx_interface command.
NO_CHECK, NO_FUSER
Boolean (y/n) settings for card eject policy. If NO_CHECK is
set, then ``cardctl eject'' will shut down a device even if
there are open connections. If NO_FUSER is set, then the script
will not check for busy NFS mounts or kill processes using those
mounts.
For example:
case "$ADDRESS" in
*,*,*,*)
IF_PORT="10base2"
BOOTP="n"
IPADDR="10.0.0.1"
NETMASK="255.255.255.0"
NETWORK="10.0.0.0"
BROADCAST="10.0.0.255"
GATEWAY="10.0.0.1"
DOMAIN="domain.org"
DNS_1="dns1.domain.org"
;;
esac
To automatically mount and unmount NFS filesystems, first add all
these filesystems to /etc/fstab, but include noauto in the mount
options. In network.opts, list the filesystem mount points in the
MOUNTS variable. It is especially important to use either cardctl or
cardinfo to shut down a network card when NFS mounts are active. It
is not possible to cleanly unmount NFS filesystems if a network card
is simply ejected without warning.
In addition to the usual network configuration parameters, the
network.opts script can specify extra actions to be taken after an
interface is configured, or before an interface is shut down. If
network.opts defines a shell function called start_fn, it will be
invoked by the network script after the interface is configured, and
the interface name will be passed to the function as its first (and
only) argument. Similarly, if it is defined, stop_fn will be invoked
before shutting down an interface.
The transceiver type for some (mostly old) cards must be manually be
selected using the IF_PORT setting. This can either be a numeric
value, or a keyword identifying the transceiver type. All the network
drivers default to either autodetect the interface if possible, or
10baseT otherwise. The ifport command can be used to check or set the
current transceiver type. For example:
# ifport eth0 10base2
#
# ifport eth0
eth0 2 (10base2)
Most modern 10/100baseT cards use a ``media independent interface''
(MII) transceiver that automatically selects line speed and duplex
setting. The mii-tool command can be used to monitor and control the
behavior of the MII interface.
4.3.2. Comments about specific cards
<20> With IBM CCAE and Socket EA cards, the transceiver type (10base2,
10baseT, AUI) needs to be set when the network device is
configured. Make sure that the transceiver type reported in the
system log matches your connection.
<20> The Farallon EtherWave is actually based on the 3Com 3c589, with a
special transceiver. Though the EtherWave uses 10baseT-style
connections, its transceiver requires that the 3c589 be configured
in 10base2 mode.
<20> If you have trouble with an IBM CCAE, NE4100, Thomas Conrad, or
Kingston adapter, try increasing the memory access time with the
mem_speed=# option to the pcnet_cs module. An example of how to do
this is given in the standard config.opts file. Try speeds of up
to 1000 (in nanoseconds).
<20> For the New Media Ethernet adapter, on some systems, it may be
necessary to increase the IO port access time with the io_speed=#
option when the pcmcia_core module is loaded. Edit CORE_OPTS in
the startup script to set this option.
<20> The multicast support in the New Media Ethernet driver is
incomplete. The latest driver will function with multicast
kernels, but will ignore multicast packets. Promiscuous mode
should work properly.
<20> The driver used by the IBM and 3Com token ring adapters seems to
behave very badly if the cards are not connected to a ring when
they get initialized. Always connect these cards to the net before
they are powered up. If ifconfig reports the hardware address as
all 0's, this is likely to be due to a memory window configuration
problem.
<20> Some Linksys, D-Link, and IC-Card 10baseT/10base2 cards have a
unique way of selecting the transceiver type that isn't handled by
the Linux drivers. One workaround is to boot DOS and use the
vendor-supplied utility to select the transceiver, then warm boot
Linux. Alternatively, a Linux utility to perform this function is
available at <http://pcmcia-
cs.sourceforge.net/ftp/extras/dlport.c>.
<20> 16-bit PCMCIA cards have a maximum performance of 1.5-2 MB/sec.
That means that any 16-bit 100baseT card (i.e., any card that uses
the pcnet_cs, 3c574_cs, smc91c92_cs, or xirc2ps_cs driver) will
never achieve full 100baseT throughput. Only CardBus network
adapters can fully exploit 100baseT data rates.
<20> For WaveLAN wireless network adapters, Jean Tourrilhes
(jt@hpl.hp.com) has put together a wireless HOWTO at
<http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/>.
4.3.3. Diagnosing problems with network adapters
<20> In 3.1.15 and later PCMCIA releases, the test_network script in the
debug-tools subdirectory of the PCMCIA source tree will spot some
common problems.
<20> Is your card recognized as an ethernet card? Check the system log
and make sure that cardmgr identifies the card correctly and starts
up one of the network drivers. If it doesn't, your card might
still be usable if it is compatible with a supported card. This
will be most easily done if the card claims to be ``NE2000
compatible''.
<20> Is the card configured properly? If you are using a supported
card, and it was recognized by cardmgr, but still doesn't work,
there might be an interrupt or port conflict with another device.
Find out what resources the card is using (from the system log),
and try excluding these in /etc/pcmcia/config.opts to force the
card to use something different.
<20> If your card seems to be configured properly, but sometimes locks
up, particularly under high load, you may need to try changing your
socket driver timing parameters. See the ``Startup options''
section for more information.
<20> If you get ``Network is unreachable'' messages when you try to
access the network, then the routing information specified in
/etc/pcmcia/network.opts is incorrect. This exact message is an
absolutely foolproof indication of a routing error. On the other
hand, mis-configured cards will usually fail silently.
<20> If you are trying to use DHCP to configure your network interface,
try testing things with a static IP address instead, to rule out a
DHCP configuration problem.
<20> To diagnose problems in /etc/pcmcia/network.opts, start by trying
to ping other systems on the same subnet using their IP addresses.
Then try to ping your gateway, and then machines on other subnets.
Ping machines by name only after trying these simpler tests.
<20> Make sure your problem is really a PCMCIA one. It may help to see
see if the card works under DOS with the vendor's drivers. Double
check your modifications to the /etc/pcmcia/network.opts script.
Make sure your drop cable, ``T'' jack, terminator, etc are working.
<20> Use real network cables. Don't even think about using that old
phone cord you found in your basement. And this means Category 5
cable for 100baseT. It really matters.
4.4. PCMCIA serial and modem devices
Linux serial devices are accessed via the /dev/ttyS* and /dev/cua*
special device files. In pre-2.2 kernels, the ttyS* devices were for
incoming connections, such as directly connected terminals, and the
cua* devices were for outgoing connections, such as modems. Use of
cua* devices is deprecated in current kernels, and ttyS* can be used
for all applications. The configuration of a serial device can be
examined and modified with the setserial command.
When a serial or modem card is detected, it will be assigned to the
first available serial device slot. This will usually be /dev/ttyS1
(cua1) or /dev/ttyS2 (cua2), depending on the number of built-in
serial ports. The ttyS* device is the one reported in stab. The
default serial device option script, /etc/pcmcia/serial.opts, will
link the device file to /dev/modem as a convenience. For pre-2.2
kernels, the link is made to the cua* device.
Do not try to use /etc/rc.d/rc.serial to configure a PCMCIA modem.
This script should only be used to configure non-removable devices.
Modify /etc/pcmcia/serial.opts if you want to do anything special to
set up your modem. Also, do not try to change the IO port and
interrupt settings of a serial device using setserial. This would
tell the serial driver to look for the device in a different place,
but would not change how the card's hardware is actually configured.
The serial configuration script allows you to specify other setserial
options, as well as whether a line should be added to /etc/inittab for
this port.
The device address passed to serial.opts has three comma-separated
fields: the first is the scheme, the second is the socket number, and
the third is the device instance. The device instance may take
several values for cards that support multiple serial ports, but for
single-port cards, it will always be 0. If you commonly use more than
one modem, you may want to specify different settings based on socket
position, as in:
case "$ADDRESS" in
*,0,*)
# Options for modem in socket 0
LINK=/dev/modem0
;;
*,1,*)
# Options for modem in socket 1
LINK=/dev/modem1
;;
esac
If a PCMCIA modem is already configured when Linux boots, it may be
incorrectly identified as an ordinary built-in serial port. This is
harmless, however, when the PCMCIA drivers take control of the modem,
it will be assigned a different device slot. It is best to either
parse stab or use /dev/modem, rather than expecting a PCMCIA modem to
always have the same device assignment.
If you configure your kernel to load the basic Linux serial port
driver as a module, you must edit /etc/pcmcia/config to indicate that
this module must be loaded. Edit the serial device entry to read:
device "serial_cs"
class "serial" module "misc/serial", "serial_cs"
4.4.1. Serial device parameters
The following parameters can be defined in serial.opts:
LINK
Specifies a path for a symbolic link to be created to the
``callout'' device (e.g., /dev/cua* for pre-2.2, or /dev/ttyS*
for 2.2 kernels).
SERIAL_OPTS
Specifies options to be passed to the setserial command.
INITTAB
If specified, this will be used to construct an inittab entry
for the device.
NO_CHECK, NO_FUSER
Boolean (y/n) settings for card eject policy. If NO_CHECK is
true, then ``cardctl eject'' will shut down a device even if it
is busy. If NO_FUSER is true, then the script will not try to
kill processes using an ejected device.
For example:
case "$ADDRESS" in
*,*,*)
LINK="/dev/modem"
SERIAL_OPTS=""
INITTAB="/sbin/getty"
4.4.2. Comments about specific cards
<20> The Uniden Data 2000 Wireless CDPD card has some special dialing
strings for initiating SLIP and PPP mode. For SLIP, use ``ATDT2'';
for PPP, "ATDT0".
<20> Socket IO revision H serial port cards have a faster-than-normal
clock rate for the UART. The card's actual baud rate is four times
faster than the serial driver thinks it is. To work around the
problem, specify SERIAL_OPTS="baud_base 460800" in
/etc/pcmcia/serial.opts.
4.4.3. Diagnosing problems with serial devices
<20> In 3.1.15 and later PCMCIA releases, the test_modem script in the
debug-tools subdirectory of the PCMCIA source tree will spot some
common problems.
<20> Is your card recognized as a modem? Check the system log and make
sure that cardmgr identifies the card correctly and starts up the
serial_cs driver. If it doesn't, you may need to add a new entry
to your /etc/pcmcia/config file so that it will be identified
properly. See the ``Configuring unrecognized cards'' section for
details.
<20> Is the modem configured successfully by serial_cs? Again, check
the system log and look for messages from the serial_cs driver. If
you see ``register_serial() failed'', you may have an I/O port
conflict with another device. Another tip-off of a conflict is if
the device is reported to be an 8250; most modern modems should be
identified as 16550A UART's. If you think you're seeing a port
conflict, edit /etc/pcmcia/config.opts and exclude the port range
that was allocated for the modem.
<20> Is there an interrupt conflict? If the system log looks good, but
the modem just doesn't seem to work, try using setserial to change
the irq to 0, and see if the modem works. This causes the serial
driver to use a slower polled mode instead of using interrupts. If
this seems to fix the problem, it is likely that some other device
in your system is using the interrupt selected by serial_cs. You
should add a line to /etc/pcmcia/config.opts to exclude this
interrupt.
<20> If the modem seems to work only very, very slowly, this is an
almost certain indicator of an interrupt conflict.
<20> Make sure your problem is really a PCMCIA one. It may help to see
if the card works under DOS with the vendor's drivers. Also, don't
test the card with something complex like SLIP or PPP until you are
sure you can make simple connections. If simple things work but
SLIP does not, your problem is most likely with SLIP, not with
PCMCIA.
<20> If you get kernel messages indicating that the serial_cs module
cannot be loaded, it means that your kernel does not have serial
device support. If you have compiled the serial driver as a
module, you must modify /etc/pcmcia/config to indicate that the
serial module should be loaded before serial_cs.
4.5. PCMCIA parallel port devices
The Linux parallel port driver is layered so that several high-level
device types can share use of the same low level port driver. Printer
devices are accessed via the /dev/lp* special device files. The
configuration of a printer device can be examined and modified with
the tunelp command.
The parport_cs module depends on the parport and parport_pc drivers,
which may be either compiled into the kernel or compiled as modules.
The layered driver structure means that any top-level parallel drivers
(such as the plip driver, the printer driver, etc) must be compiled as
modules. These drivers only recognize parallel port devices at module
startup time, so they need to be loaded after any PC Card parallel
devices are configured.
The device address passed to parport.opts has three comma-separated
fields: the first is the scheme, the second is the socket number, and
the third is the device instance. The device instance may take
several values for cards that support multiple parallel ports, but for
single-port cards, it will always be 0. If you commonly use more than
one such card, you may want to specify different settings based on
socket position, as in:
case "$ADDRESS" in
*,0,*)
# Options for card in socket 0
LINK=/dev/printer0
;;
*,1,*)
# Options for card in socket 1
LINK=/dev/printer1
;;
esac
4.5.1. Parallel device parameters
The following parameters can be defined in parport.opts:
LINK
Specifies a path for a symbolic link to be created to the
printer port.
LP_OPTS
Specifies options to be passed to the tunelp command.
NO_CHECK, NO_FUSER
Boolean (y/n) settings for card eject policy. If NO_CHECK is
true, then ``cardctl eject'' will shut down a device even if it
is busy. If NO_FUSER is true, then the script will not try to
kill processes using an ejected device.
For example:
case "$ADDRESS" in
*,*,*,*)
LINK="/dev/printer"
LP_OPTS=""
4.5.2. Diagnosing problems with parallel port devices
<20> Is there an interrupt conflict? If the system log looks good, but
the port just doesn't seem to work, try using tunelp to change the
irq to 0, and see if things improve. This switches the driver to
polling mode. If this seems to fix the problem, it is likely that
some other device in your system is using the interrupt selected by
parport_cs. You should add a line to /etc/pcmcia/config.opts to
exclude this interrupt.
<20> If you get kernel messages indicating that the parport_cs module
cannot be loaded, it means that your kernel does not have parallel
device support. If you have compiled the parallel driver as a
module, you may need to modify /etc/pcmcia/config to indicate that
the parport and parport_pc modules should be loaded before
parport_cs.
4.6. PCMCIA SCSI adapters
All the currently supported PCMCIA SCSI cards are work-alikes of one
of the following ISA bus cards: the Qlogic, the Adaptec AHA-152X, or
the Future Domain TMC-16x0. The PCMCIA drivers are built by linking
some PCMCIA-specific code (in qlogic_cs.c, aha152x_cs.c, or
fdomain_cs.c) with the normal Linux SCSI driver, pulled from the Linux
kernel source tree. The Adaptec APA1480 CardBus driver is based on
the kernel aic7xxx PCI driver. Due to limitations in the Linux SCSI
driver model, only one removable card per driver is supported.
When a new SCSI host adapter is detected, the SCSI drivers will probe
for devices. Check the system log to make sure your devices are
detected properly. New SCSI devices will be assigned to the first
available SCSI device files. The first SCSI disk will be /dev/sda,
the first SCSI tape will be /dev/st0, and the first CD-ROM will be
/dev/scd0.
A list of SCSI devices connected to this host adapter will be shown in
stab, and the SCSI configuration script, /etc/pcmcia/scsi, will be
called once for each attached device, to either configure or shut down
that device. The default script does not take any actions to
configure SCSI devices, but will properly unmount filesystems on SCSI
devices when a card is removed.
The device addresses passed to scsi.opts are complicated, because of
the variety of things that can be attached to a SCSI adapter.
Addresses consist of either six or seven comma-separated fields: the
current scheme, the device type, the socket number, the SCSI channel,
ID, and logical unit number, and optionally, the partition number.
The device type will be ``sd'' for disks, ``st'' for tapes, ``sr'' for
CD-ROM devices, and ``sg'' for generic SCSI devices. For most setups,
the SCSI channel and logical unit number will be 0. For disk devices
with several partitions, scsi.opts will first be called for the whole
device, with a five-field address. The script should set the PARTS
variable to a list of partitions. Then, scsi.opts will be called for
each partition, with the longer six-field addresses.
If your kernel does not have a top-level driver (disk, tape, etc) for
a particular SCSI device, then the device will not be configured by
the PCMCIA drivers. As a side effect, the device's name in stab will
be something like ``sd#nnnn'' where ``nnnn'' is a four-digit hex
number. This happens when cardmgr is unable to translate a SCSI
device ID into a corresponding Linux device name.
It is possible to modularize the top-level SCSI drivers so that they
are loaded on demand. To do so, you need to edit /etc/pcmcia/config
to tell cardmgr which extra modules need to be loaded when your
adapter is configured. For example:
device "aha152x_cs"
class "scsi" module "scsi/scsi_mod", "scsi/sd_mod", "aha152x_cs"
would say to load the core SCSI module and the top-level disk driver
module before loading the regular PCMCIA driver module.
Always turn on SCSI devices before powering up your laptop, or before
inserting the adapter card, so that the SCSI bus is properly
terminated when the adapter is configured. Also be very careful about
ejecting a SCSI adapter. Be sure that all associated SCSI devices are
unmounted and closed before ejecting the card. The best way to ensure
this is to use either cardctl or cardinfo to request card removal
before physically ejecting the card. For now, all SCSI devices should
be powered up before plugging in a SCSI adapter, and should stay
connected until after you unplug the adapter and/or power down your
laptop.
There is a potential complication when using these cards that does not
arise with ordinary ISA bus adapters. The SCSI bus carries a
``termination power'' signal that is necessary for proper operation of
ordinary passive SCSI terminators. PCMCIA SCSI adapters do not supply
termination power, so if it is required, an external device must
supply it. Some external SCSI devices may be configured to supply
termination power. Others, such as the Zip Drive and the Syquest EZ-
Drive, use active terminators that do not depend on it. In some
cases, it may be necessary to use a special terminator block such as
the APS SCSI Sentry 2, which has an external power supply. When
configuring your SCSI device chain, be aware of whether or not any of
your devices require or can provide termination power.
4.6.1. SCSI device parameters
The following parameters can be defined in scsi.opts:
LINK
Specifies a path for a symbolic link to be created to this
device.
DO_FSTAB
A boolean (y/n) setting: specifies if an entry should be added
to /etc/fstab for this device.
DO_FSCK
A boolean (y/n) setting: specifies if the filesystem should be
checked before being mounted, with ``fsck -Ta''.
DO_MOUNT
A boolean (y/n) setting: specifies if this device should be
automatically mounted at card insertion time.
FSTYPE, OPTS, MOUNTPT
The filesystem type, mount options, and mount point to be used
for the fstab entry and/or mounting the device.
NO_CHECK, NO_FUSER
Boolean (y/n) settings for card eject policy. If NO_CHECK is
true, then ``cardctl eject'' will shut down a device even if it
is busy. If NO_FUSER is true, then the script will not try to
kill processes using an ejected device.
For example, here is a script for configuring a disk device at SCSI ID
3, with two partitions, and a CD-ROM at SCSI ID 6:
case "$ADDRESS" in
*,sd,*,0,3,0)
# This device has two partitions...
PARTS="1 2"
;;
*,sd,*,0,3,0,1)
# Options for partition 1:
# update /etc/fstab, and mount an ext2 fs on /usr1
DO_FSTAB="y" ; DO_FSCK="y" ; DO_MOUNT="y"
FSTYPE="ext2"
OPTS=""
MOUNTPT="/usr1"
;;
*,sd,*,0,3,0,2)
# Options for partition 2:
# update /etc/fstab, and mount an MS-DOS fs on /usr2
DO_FSTAB="y" ; DO_FSCK="y" ; DO_MOUNT="y"
FSTYPE="msdos"
OPTS=""
MOUNTPT="/usr2"
;;
*,sr,*,0,6,0)
# Options for CD-ROM at SCSI ID 6
PARTS=""
DO_FSTAB="y" ; DO_FSCK="n" ; DO_MOUNT="y"
FSTYPE="iso9660"
OPTS="ro"
MOUNTPT="/cdrom"
;;
esac
4.6.2. Comments about specific cards
<20> The Adaptec APA-1480 CardBus card needs a large IO port window (256
contiguous ports aligned on a 256-port boundary). It may be
necessary to expand the IO port regions in /etc/pcmcia/config.opts
to guarantee that such a large window can be found.
<20> The Adaptec APA-460 SlimSCSI adapter is not supported. This card
was originally sold under the Trantor name, and when Adaptec merged
with Trantor, they continued to sell the Trantor card with an
Adaptec label. The APA-460 is not compatible with any existing
Linux driver.
<20> I have had one report of a bad interaction between the New Media
Bus Toaster and a UMAX Astra 1200s scanner. Due to the complexity
of the SCSI protocol, when diagnosing problems with SCSI devices,
it is worth considering that incompatible combinations like this
may exist and may not be documented.
4.6.3. Diagnosing problems with SCSI adapters
<20> With the aha152x_cs driver (used by Adaptec, New Media, and a few
others), it seems that SCSI disconnect/reconnect support is a
frequent source of trouble with tape drives. To disable this
``feature,'' add the following to /etc/pcmcia/config.opts:
module "aha152x_cs" opts "reconnect=0"
<20> Also with the aha152x_cs driver, certain devices seem to require a
longer startup delay, controlled via the reset_delay module
parameter. The Yamaha 4416S CDR drive is one such device. The
result is the device is identified successfully, then hangs the
system. In such cases, try:
module "aha152x_cs" opts "reset_delay=500"
<20> Another potential source of SCSI device probe problems is probing
of multiple LUN's. If you see successful detection of a device,
followed by SCSI bus timeouts when LUN 1 for that device is probed,
then disable the kernel's CONFIG_SCSI_MULTI_LUN option.
<20> If you have compiled SCSI support as modules (CONFIG_SCSI is
``m''), you may need to modify /etc/pcmcia/config to load the SCSI
modules before the appropriate *_cs driver is loaded.
<20> If you get ``aborting command due to timeout'' messages when the
SCSI bus is probed, you almost certainly have an interrupt
conflict.
<20> If the host driver reports ``no SCSI devices found'', verify that
your kernel was compiled with the appropriate top-level SCSI
drivers for your devices (i.e., disk, tape, CD-ROM, and/or
generic). If a top-level driver is missing, devices of that type
will be ignored.
4.7. PCMCIA memory cards
The memory_cs driver handles all types of memory cards, as well as
providing direct access to the PCMCIA memory address space for cards
that have other functions. When loaded, it creates a combination of
character and block devices. See the man page for the module for a
complete description of the device naming scheme. Block devices are
used for disk-like access (creating and mounting filesystems, etc).
The character devices are for "raw" unbuffered reads and writes at
arbitrary locations.
The device address passed to memory.opts consists of two fields: the
scheme, and the socket number. The options are applied to the first
common memory partition on the corresponding memory card.
Some flash memory cards, and most simple static RAM cards, lack a
``Card Information Structure'' (CIS), which is the system PCMCIA cards
use to identify themselves. Normally, cardmgr will assume that any
card that lacks a CIS is a simple memory card, and load the memory_cs
driver. Thus, a common side effect of a general card identification
problem is that other types of cards may be misdetected as memory
cards.
There is another issue to consider when handling memory cards that do
not have CIS information. At startup time, the PCMCIA package tries
to use the first detected card to determine what memory regions are
usable for PCMCIA. The memory scan can be fooled if that card is a
simple memory card. If you plan to use memory cards often, it is best
to limit the memory windows in /etc/pcmcia/config.opts to known-good
regions.
The memory_cs driver uses a heuristic to guess the capacity of these
cards. The heuristic does not work for write protected cards, and may
make mistakes in some other cases as well. If a card is misdetected,
its size should then be explicitly specified when using commands such
as dd or mkfs. The memory_cs module also has a parameter for
overriding the size detection. See the man page.
4.7.1. Memory device parameters
The following parameters can be specified in memory.opts:
DO_FSTAB
A boolean (y/n) setting: specifies if an entry should be added
to /etc/fstab for this device.
DO_FSCK
A boolean (y/n) setting: specifies if the filesystem should be
checked before being mounted, with ``fsck -Ta''.
DO_MOUNT
A boolean (y/n) setting: specifies if this device should be
automatically mounted at card insertion time.
FSTYPE, OPTS, MOUNTPT
The filesystem type, mount options, and mount point to be used
for the fstab entry and/or mounting the device.
NO_CHECK, NO_FUSER
Boolean (y/n) settings for card eject policy. If NO_CHECK is
true, then ``cardctl eject'' will shut down a device even if it
is busy. If NO_FUSER is true, then the script will not try to
kill processes using an ejected device.
Here is an example of a script that will automatically mount memory
cards based on which socket they are inserted into:
case "$ADDRESS" in
*,0,0)
# Mount filesystem, but don't update /etc/fstab
DO_FSTAB="n" ; DO_FSCK="y" ; DO_MOUNT="y"
FSTYPE="ext2" ; OPTS=""
MOUNTPT="/mem0"
;;
*,1,0)
# Mount filesystem, but don't update /etc/fstab
DO_FSTAB="n" ; DO_FSCK="y" ; DO_MOUNT="y"
FSTYPE="ext2" ; OPTS=""
MOUNTPT="/mem1"
;;
esac
4.7.2. Using linear flash memory cards
The following information applies only to so-called ``linear flash''
memory cards. Many flash cards, including all SmartMedia and
CompactFlash cards, actually include circuitry to emulate an IDE disk
device. Those cards are thus handled as IDE devices, not memory
cards.
There are two major formats for flash memory cards: the FTL or ``flash
translation layer'' style, and the Microsoft Flash File System. The
FTL format is generally more flexible because it allows any ordinary
high-level filesystem (ext2, ms-dos, etc) to be used on a flash card
as if it were an ordinary disk device. The FFS is a completely
different filesystem type. Linux cannot currently handle cards
formated with FFS.
To use a flash memory card as an ordinary disk-like block device,
first create an FTL partition on the device with the ftl_format
command. This layer hides the device-specific details of flash memory
programming and make the card look like a simple block device. For
example:
ftl_format -i /dev/mem0c0c
Note that this command accesses the card through the ``raw'' memory
card interface. Once formatted, the card can be accessed as an
ordinary block device via the ftl_cs driver. For example:
mke2fs /dev/ftl0c0
mount -t ext2 /dev/ftl0c0 /mnt
Device naming for FTL devices is tricky. Minor device numbers have
three parts: the card number, the region number on that card, and
optionally, the partition within that region. A region can either be
treated as a single block device with no partition table (like a
floppy), or it can be partitioned like a hard disk device. The
``ftl0c0'' device is card 0, common memory region 0, the entire
region. The ``ftl0c0p1'' through ``ftl0c0p4'' devices are primary
partitions 1 through 4 if the region has been partitioned.
Configuration options for FTL partitions can be given in ftl.opts,
which is similar in structure to memory.opts. The device address
passed to ftl.opts consists of three or four fields: the scheme, the
socket number, the region number, and optionally, the partition
number. Most flash cards have just one flash memory region, so the
region number will generally always be zero.
Intel Series 100 flash cards use the first 128K flash block to store
the cards' configuration information. To prevent accidental erasure
of this information, ftl_format will automatically detect this and
skip the first block when creating an FTL partition.
4.8. PCMCIA ATA/IDE card drives
ATA/IDE drive support is based on the regular kernel IDE driver. This
includes SmartMedia and CompactFlash devices: these flash memory cards
are set up so that they emulate an IDE interface. The PCMCIA-specific
part of the driver is ide_cs. Be sure to use cardctl or cardinfo to
shut down an ATA/IDE card before ejecting it, as the driver has not
been made ``hot-swap-proof''.
The device addresses passed to ide.opts consist of either three or
four fields: the current scheme, the socket number, the drive's serial
number, and an optional partition number. The ide_info command can be
used to obtain an IDE device's serial number. As with SCSI devices,
ide.opts is first called for the entire device. If ide.opts returns a
list of partitions in the PARTS variable, the script will then be
called for each partition.
4.8.1. ATA/IDE fixed-disk device parameters
The following parameters can be specified in ide.opts:
DO_FSTAB
A boolean (y/n) setting: specifies if an entry should be added
to /etc/fstab for this device.
DO_FSCK
A boolean (y/n) setting: specifies if the filesystem should be
checked before being mounted, with ``fsck -Ta''.
DO_MOUNT
A boolean (y/n) setting: specifies if this device should be
automatically mounted at card insertion time.
FSTYPE, OPTS, MOUNTPT
The filesystem type, mount options, and mount point to be used
for the fstab entry and/or mounting the device.
NO_CHECK, NO_FUSER
Boolean (y/n) settings for card eject policy. If NO_CHECK is
true, then ``cardctl eject'' will shut down a device even if it
is busy. If NO_FUSER is true, then the script will not try to
kill processes using an ejected device.
Here is an example ide.opts file to mount the first partition of any
ATA/IDE card on /mnt.
case "$ADDRESS" in
*,*,*,1)
DO_FSTAB="y" ; DO_FSCK="y" ; DO_MOUNT="y"
FSTYPE="msdos"
OPTS=""
MOUNTPT="/mnt"
;;
*,*,*)
PARTS="1"
;;
esac
4.8.2. Diagnosing problems with ATA/IDE adapters
<20> An IO port conflict may cause the IDE driver to misdetect the drive
geometry and report ``INVALID GEOMETRY: 0 PHYSICAL HEADS?''. To
fix, try excluding the selected IO port range in
/etc/pcmcia/config.opts.
<20> Some IDE drives violate the PCMCIA specification by requiring more
time to spin up than the maximum allowed card setup time. This may
result in ``timed out during reset'' messages at card detect time.
Adjust the unreset_delay and/or unreset_limit parameters for the
pcmcia_core module to give a drive more time to spin up; see the
pcmcia_core man page for parameter details. For example:
CORE_OPTS="unreset_delay=400"
<20> To use an ATA/IDE CD-ROM device, your kernel must be compiled with
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDECD enabled. This will normally be the case for
standard kernels, however it is something to be aware of if you
compile a custom kernel.
<20> A common error when using IDE drives is try to mount the wrong
device file. Generally, you want to mount a partition of the
device, not the entire device (i.e., /dev/hde1, not /dev/hde).
<20> The Linux IDE driver may have trouble configuring certain
removable-media drives if no media is present at insertion time.
The IBM Portable DriveBay has this problem.
<20> Some kernels will report a pair of ``drive_cmd'' errors at
insertion time. These errors can be ignored: they pop up when a
removable IDE device does not accept the IDE ``door lock'' command.
4.9. Multifunction cards
A single interrupt can be shared by several drivers, such as the
serial driver and an ethernet driver: in fact, the PCMCIA
specification requires all card functions to share the same interrupt.
Normally, all card functions are available without having to swap
drivers. All Linux kernels support this kind of interrupt sharing.
Simultaneous use of two card functions is ``tricky'' and various
hardware vendors have implemented interrupt sharing in their own
incompatible (and sometimes proprietary) ways. The drivers for some
cards (Ositech Jack of Diamonds, 3Com 3c562 and related cards, Linksys
cards) properly support simultaneous access, but others (older
Megahertz cards in particular) do not. If you have trouble using a
card with both functions active, try using each function in isolation.
That may require explicitly doing an ``ifconfig down'' to shut down a
network interface and use a modem on the same card.
5. Advanced topics
5.1. Resource allocation for PCMCIA devices
In theory, it should not really matter which interrupt is allocated to
which device, as long as two devices are not configured to use the
same interrupt. In /etc/pcmcia/config.opts you'll find a place for
excluding interrupts that are used by non-PCMCIA devices.
Similarly, there is no way to directly specify the I/O addresses for a
card to use. The /etc/pcmcia/config.opts file allows you to specify
ranges of ports available for use by any card, or to exclude ranges
that conflict with other devices.
After modifying /etc/pcmcia/config.opts, you can reinitialize cardmgr
with ``kill -HUP''.
The interrupt used to monitor card status changes is chosen by the
low-level socket driver module (i82365 or tcic) before cardmgr parses
/etc/pcmcia/config, so it is not affected by changes to this file. To
set this interrupt, use the cs_irq= option when the socket driver is
loaded, by setting the PCIC_OPTS variable in /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia.
All the client card drivers have a parameter called irq_list for
specifying which interrupts they may try to allocate. These driver
options should be set in your /etc/pcmcia/config file. For example:
device "serial_cs"
module "serial_cs" opts "irq_list=8,12"
...
would specify that the serial driver should only use irq 8 or irq 12.
Regardless of irq_list settings, Card Services will never allocate an
interrupt that is already in use by another device, or an interrupt
that is excluded in the config file.
5.2. PCI interrupt configuration problems and solutions
Most of the following discussion applies to 2.2 and earlier kernels.
With 2.4 and later kernels, the PCI subsystem has more complete
responsibility for PCI interrupt management. The following tips may
help diagnose a problem, though some workarounds described here may
not be available.
5.2.1. An overview of PCI interrupt routing issues
Each PCI slot has four PCI interrupt pins, INTA through INTD. Single
function devices will only use the INTA pin; multifunction devices may
use multiple INT pins. On the processor side, on x86 single processor
systems, incoming hardware interrupts are directed to interrupt
requests (irq's) numbered 0..15. The PCI interrupt router, usually
part of the PCI-to-ISA host bridge, determines how incoming PCI
interrupts are mapped to CPU irq numbers. Most modern bridge chips
have several PCI interrupt inputs, known as PIRQ1, PIRQ2, etc, each of
which can be routed to any CPU irq number. So we might have something
like:
PCI slot 1 INTA --> router PIRQ1 --> CPU irq 9
PCI slot 1 INTB --> router PIRQ2 --> CPU irq 10
PCI slot 2 INTA --> router PIRQ2 --> CPU irq 10
PCI slot 2 INTB --> router PIRQ1 --> CPU irq 9
Multiple INT pins are often connected to the same PIRQ pin. Usually,
the connections from INT pins to PIRQ pins are arranged to spread
installed devices out as much as possible, to give the OS the most
flexibility for choosing how interrupts are shared. The mapping from
bridge PIRQ pins to CPU irq numbers can be obtained by reading
registers in the interrupt router. The mapping from INT pins to the
router's PIRQ pins, however, depends on how the board designer decided
to connect things up, and cannot be directly determined by driver
software.
For most PCI devices, the OS does not need to understand the interrupt
router details. Each PCI device has a configuration register, the PCI
Interrupt Line Register, that the BIOS initializes with the
appropriate CPU irq number for that device. Unfortunately, the BIOS
generally will not configure PCI interrupts for CardBus bridge
devices.
The PCI BIOS's Interrupt Routing Table is a data structure that
contains information about the mapping from PCI INT pins to the PIRQ
pins on the PCI interrupt router. The routing information in the
table is stored in a somewhat unhelpful form, however. For each
device's INT pins, the table specifies a ``link value''. All
interrupts with the same link value are wired to the same PIRQ pin;
however, the meaning of the link values is defined by the chipset
vendor.
Several tools are available for examining PCI interrupt routing
information:
lspci, /proc/pci
These will show you resource information (including interrupt
assignments, where they are known) for all your PCI devices.
dump_pirq
This is in the debug-tools directory of the PCMCIA source
distribution. It dumps the contents of your PCI interrupt
routing table, if available. It also scans for known interrupt
routers and dumps their current interrupt steering settings.
Several PCMCIA module parameters affect PCI interrupt routing:
pcmcia_core module: cb_pci_irq=n
This option specifies one interrupt number to be used to program
the PCI interrupt router for all CardBus sockets that do not
already have an interrupt assignment. It only has any effect on
systems that have a PCI irq routing table, and a known interrupt
router.
i82365 module: irq_mode=n
Most CardBus bridges offer several methods for delivering
interrupts to the host. The i82365 module by default assumes
that a bridge can deliver both PCI and ISA interrupts, since
this is normal for laptops. A setting of ``irq_mode=0'' can be
used to force a bridge to use only PCI interrupts. See the man
page for the i82365 module for a description of what other
values mean for different bridge types.
i82365 module: irq_list=n,n,...
This parameter lists which ISA interrupt(s) can be used for
PCMCIA. If no ISA interrupts are available, specify
``irq_list=0''. Note that ``irq_mode=0'' implies
``irq_list=0''.
i82365 module: pci_irq_list=n,n,...
This option specifies a list of PCI interrupt numbers to use for
CardBus sockets. It differs from cb_pci_irq, because it does
not actually program the PCI interrupt router; it can be used
when you know the PCI interrupts are already set up a certain
way, even if you do not know how the router works.
If you are having problems that you think may be related to PCI
interrupt configuration, you should first verify that you have a
reasonably current PCMCIA driver package. Also carefully look at the
startup messages when the PCMCIA kernel modules are loaded. You
should see something like:
Linux PCMCIA Card Services 3.1.18
kernel build: 2.2.14-5.0 #1 Tue May 9 10:44:24 PDT 2000
options: [pci] [cardbus] [apm] [pnp]
PCI routing table version 1.0 at 0xfdf30
Intel PCIC probe:
TI 1125 rev 02 PCI-to-CardBus at slot 00:07, mem 0x20000000
host opts [0]: [ring] [serial pci & irq] [pci irq 11] ...
host opts [0]: [ring] [serial pci & irq] [pci irq 11] ...
ISA irqs (scanned) = 3,4,7 PCI status changes
The ``PCI routing table'' message indicates that a valid routing table
was found. The ``host opts'' lines indicate the interrupt delivery
mode and whether or not a PCI interrupt could be determined for each
socket. And the final line indicates the results of the scan for
available interrupts.
5.2.2. CardBus bridge is not detected by the PCI BIOS
Symptoms:
<20> Intel PCIC probe: not found.
<20> The bridge does not show up in lspci or in /proc/pci.
The Lucent/SCM PCI-to-CardBus adapters seem to confuse the PCI BIOS on
some older systems. Lucent says that this card is only supported on
systems that have a BIOS that supports the PCI 2.2 specification, or
are PC99 compliant. Some older systems will not detect the Lucent
card at all, and if the system can't detect it, the Linux drivers
cannot use it. The only possible resolutions are a BIOS upgrade, or
using a different motherboard or CardBus adapter.
5.2.3. PCI interrupt delivery problems
Symptoms:
<20> Cards seem to be configured correctly, but do not work.
<20> /proc/interrupts shows a count of 0 for interrupts assigned to
PCMCIA drivers.
CardBus bridges usually support two types of interrupts, PCI and ISA.
Partly for historical reasons, it has become conventional to use PCI
interrupts for signaling card insertion and removal events, and for
CardBus card interrupts; and ISA interrupts for 16-bit cards. Since
version 3.1.9, this is the scheme that the Linux PCMCIA system will
use by default. Most CardBus bridges support multiple methods for
delivering interrupts to the host CPU. Methods include ``parallel''
interrupts, where each supported irq has a dedicated pin on the
bridge; various serial interrupt protocols, where one or two pins are
used to communicate with an interrupt controller; and hybrids, where
PCI interrupts might be signalled using dedicated pins, while ISA
interrupts are delivered via a serial controller.
In general, it is the responsibility of the BIOS to program a bridge
for the appropriate interrupt delivery method. However, there are
systems that do this incorrectly, and in some cases, there is no way
for software to safely detect the correct delivery method. The i82365
module reports the bridge mode at startup time, and has a parameter,
irq_mode, that can be used to reconfigure it. Not all bridges support
this parameter, and the meaning of irq_mode depends on the bridge
type. See the i82365 man page for a description of what values are
supported by your bridge. In some cases, a bridge may function
correctly in more than one interrupt mode.
Most PCMCIA card readers that fit in a PCI bus slot only provide PCI
interrupt routing. The Linux drivers assume that all bridges have ISA
interrupt capability, since that is generally correct on laptops.
With a card reader, it will generally be necessary to use the irq_mode
parameter to specify a ``PCI only'' interrupt delivery mode; the value
of the parameter depends on the bridge type, so check the i82365 man
page. A few PCI card readers require an irq_mode that permits ISA
interrupts, but those interrupts are not actually connected; in that
case, use ``irq_list=0''.
Check the system log and verify that the CardBus bridge has a PCI
interrupt assignment. If it does not, then resolve that problem
first, then return here if the symptoms persist. Next, experiment
with different values for the irq_mode parameter.
5.2.4. No PCI interrupt assignment; valid routing table
Symptoms:
<20> The Intel PCIC probe reports ``no pci irq'' for each socket.
<20> There is a routing table, and the router type is supported.
When a routing table is present, the pcmcia_core module will try to
automatically configure the PCI interrupt router, but only does so
when it has a safe and unambiguous choice for what PCI interrupt to
use. If there are several valid choices, then you must use the
``cb_pci_irq=...'' option to specify which interrupt to assign. Your
best bet is to pick the most lightly used interrupt that is already
assigned to another PCI device.
Moving the card to another slot sometimes offers a quick solution. If
that slot shares its interrupt with an already-configured device, then
the PCMCIA drivers will have no trouble figuring out the assignment.
5.2.5. No PCI interrupt assignment; unknown interrupt router
Symptoms:
<20> The Intel PCIC probe reports ``no pci irq'' for each socket.
<20> There is a routing table, but the router is an unknown type.
Adding support for a new interrupt router is tricky but not a big job.
First determine, from a datasheet, how your interrupt router steers
PCI interrupts. Then, see if you can guess the meaning of the link
values from the output of dump_pirq. Usually this is reasonably
obvious. Most routers have four PIRQ pins, and the link values might
be something like 1,2,3,4, or 0x10,0x18,0x20,0x28, or
0x60,0x61,0x62,0x63. The values are usually chosen so that they can
be easily converted to the location of the appropriate interrupt
steering register. Finally, add small functions to
modules/pci_fixup.c to get/set the interrupt steering information for
this router, using the other routers as examples.
5.2.6. No PCI interrupt assignment; no routing table
Symptoms:
<20> The Intel PCIC probe reports ``no pci irq'' for each socket.
<20> No interrupt routing table is found.
Without an interrupt routing table, we cannot tell how interrupts from
the CardBus bridge are directed to CPU irq numbers. All hope is not
lost: you may be able to guess the PCI interrupt assignment and use
the ``pci_irq_list=...'' option to pass this information to the i82365
module. Good guesses might include the interrupt(s) assigned to other
PCI devices, the interrupt(s) used under Windows, or any other
interrupts that are unaccounted for.
You may also want to experiment with putting the adapter in different
PCI slots, for each pci_irq_list you try. You are trying to find a
slot that shares its interrupt with an already-configured device, and
might need to try several slots to find one.
5.3. How can I have separate device setups for home and work?
This is fairly easy using ``scheme'' support. Use two configuration
schemes, called ``home'' and ``work''. Here is an example of a
network.opts script with scheme-specific settings:
case "$ADDRESS" in
work,*,*,*)
# definitions for network card in work scheme
...
;;
home,*,*,*|default,*,*,*)
# definitions for network card in home scheme
...
;;
esac
The first part of a device address is always the configuration scheme.
In this example, the second ``case'' clause will select for both the
``home'' and ``default'' schemes. So, if the scheme is unset for any
reason, it will default to the ``home'' setup.
Now, to select between the two sets of settings, run either:
cardctl scheme home
or
cardctl scheme work
The cardctl command does the equivalent of shutting down all your
cards and restarting them. The command can be safely executed whether
or not the PCMCIA system is loaded, but the command may fail if you
are using other PCMCIA devices at the time (even if their
configurations are not explicitly dependant on the scheme setting).
To find out the current scheme setting, run:
cardctl scheme
By default, the scheme setting is persistent across boots. This can
have undesirable effects if networking is initialized for the wrong
environment. Optionally, you can set the initial scheme value with
the SCHEME startup option (see ``Startup options'' for details). It
is also possible to set the scheme from the lilo boot prompt. Since
lilo passes unrecognized options to init as environment variables, a
value for SCHEME (or any other PCMCIA startup option) at the boot
prompt will be propagated into the PCMCIA startup script.
To save even more keystrokes, schemes can be specified in lilo's
configuration file. For instance, you could have:
root = /dev/hda1
read-only
image = /boot/vmlinuz
label = home
append = "SCHEME=home"
image = /boot/vmlinuz
label = work
append = "SCHEME=work"
Typing ``home'' or ``work'' at the boot prompt would then boot into
the appropriate scheme.
5.4. Booting from a PCMCIA device
Having the root filesystem on a PCMCIA device is tricky because the
Linux PCMCIA system is not designed to be linked into the kernel. Its
core components, the loadable kernel modules and the user mode cardmgr
daemon, depend on an already running system. The kernel's ``initrd''
facility works around this requirement by allowing Linux to boot using
a temporary ram disk as a minimal root image, load drivers, and then
re-mount a different root filesystem. The temporary root can
configure PCMCIA devices and then re-mount a PCMCIA device as root.
The initrd image absolutely must reside on a bootable device: this
generally cannot be put on a PCMCIA device. This is a BIOS
limitation, not a kernel limitation. It is useful here to distinguish
between ``boot-able'' devices (i.e., devices that can be booted), and
``root-able'' devices (i.e., devices that can be mounted as root).
``Boot-able'' devices are determined by the BIOS, and are generally
limited to internal floppy and hard disk drives. ``Root-able''
devices are any block devices that the kernel supports once it has
been loaded. The initrd facility makes more devices ``root-able'',
not ``boot-able''.
Some Linux distributions will allow installation to a device connected
to a PCMCIA SCSI adapter, as an unintended side-effect of their
support for installs from PCMCIA SCSI CD-ROM devices. However, at
present, no Linux installation tools support configuring an
appropriate ``initrd'' to boot Linux with a PCMCIA root filesystem.
Setting up a system with a PCMCIA root thus requires that you use
another Linux system to create the ``initrd'' image. If another Linux
system is not available, another option would be to temporarily
install a minimal Linux setup on a non-PCMCIA drive, create an initrd
image, and then reinstall to the PCMCIA target.
The Linux Bootdisk-HOWTO has some general information about setting up
boot disks but nothing specific to initrd. The main initrd document
is included with recent kernel source code distributions, in
linux/Documentation/initrd.txt. Before beginning, you should read
this document. A familiarity with lilo is also helpful. Using initrd
also requires that you have a kernel compiled with CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAM
and CONFIG_BLK_DEV_INITRD enabled.
This is an advanced configuration technique, and requires a high level
of familiarity with Linux and the PCMCIA system. Be sure to read all
the relevant documentation before starting. The following cookbook
instructions should work, but deviations from the examples will
quickly put you in uncharted and ``unsupported'' territory, and you
will be on your own.
This method absolutely requires that you use a PCMCIA driver release
of 2.9.5 or later. Older PCMCIA packages or individual components
will not work in the initrd context. Do not mix components from
different releases.
5.4.1. The pcinitrd helper script
The pcinitrd script creates a basic initrd image for booting with a
PCMCIA root partition. The image includes a minimal directory
heirarchy, a handful of device files, a few binaries, shared
libraries, and a set of PCMCIA driver modules. When invoking
pcinitrd, you specify the driver modules that you want to be included
in the image. The core PCMCIA components, pcmcia_core and ds, are
automatically included.
As an example, say that your laptop uses an i82365-compatible host
controller, and you want to boot Linux with the root filesystem on a
hard drive attached to an Adaptec SlimSCSI adapter. You could create
an appropriate initrd image with:
pcinitrd -v initrd pcmcia/i82365.o pcmcia/aha152x_cs.o
To customize the initrd startup sequence, you could mount the image
using the ``loopback'' device with a command like:
mount -o loop -t ext2 initrd /mnt
and then edit the linuxrc script. The configuration files will be
installed under /etc in the image, and can also be customized. See
the man page for pcinitrd for more information.
5.4.2. Creating an initrd boot floppy
After creating an image with pcinitrd, you can create a boot floppy by
copying the kernel, the compressed initrd image, and a few support
files for lilo to a clean floppy. In the following example, we assume
that the desired PCMCIA root device is /dev/sda1:
mke2fs /dev/fd0
mount /dev/fd0 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/etc /mnt/boot /mnt/dev
cp -a /dev/fd0 /dev/sda1 /mnt/dev
cp [kernel-image] /mnt/vmlinuz
cp /boot/boot.b /mnt/boot/boot.b
gzip < [initrd-image] > /mnt/initrd
Create /mnt/etc/lilo.conf with the contents:
boot=/dev/fd0
compact
image=/vmlinuz
label=linux
initrd=/initrd
read-only
root=/dev/sda1
Finally, invoke lilo with:
lilo -r /mnt
When lilo is invoked with -r, it performs all actions relative to the
specified alternate root directory. The reason for creating the
device files under /mnt/dev was that lilo will not be able to use the
files in /dev when it is running in this alternate-root mode.
5.4.3. Installing an initrd image on a non-Linux drive
One common use of the initrd facility would be on systems where the
internal hard drive is dedicated to another operating system. The
Linux kernel and initrd image can be placed in a non-Linux partition,
and lilo or LOADLIN can be set up to boot Linux from these images.
Assuming that you have a kernel has been configured for the
appropriate root device, and an initrd image created on another
system, the easiest way to get started is to boot Linux using LOADLIN,
as:
LOADLIN <kernel> initrd=<initrd-image>
Once you can boot Linux on your target machine, you could then install
lilo to allow booting Linux directly. For example, say that /dev/hda1
is the non-Linux target partition and /mnt can be used as a mount
point. First, create a subdirectory on the target for the Linux
files:
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/linux
cp [kernel-image] /mnt/linux/vmlinuz
cp [initrd-image] /mnt/linux/initrd
In this example, say that /dev/sda1 is the desired Linux root
partition, a SCSI hard drive mounted via a PCMCIA SCSI adapter. To
install lilo, create a lilo.conf file with the contents:
boot=/dev/hda
map=/mnt/linux/map
compact
image=/mnt/linux/vmlinuz
label=linux
root=/dev/sda1
initrd=/mnt/linux/initrd
read-only
other=/dev/hda1
table=/dev/hda
label=windows
The boot= line says to install the boot loader in the master boot
record of the specified device. The root= line identifies the desired
root filesystem to be used after loading the initrd image, and may be
unnecessary if the kernel image is already configured this way. The
other= section is used to describe the other operating system
installed on /dev/hda1.
To install lilo in this case, use:
lilo -C lilo.conf
Note that in this case, the lilo.conf file uses absolute paths that
include /mnt. I did this in the example because the target filesystem
may not support the creation of Linux device files for the boot= and
root= options.
6. Dealing with unsupported cards
6.1. Configuring unrecognized cards
Assuming that your card is supported by an existing driver, all that
needs to be done is to add an entry to /etc/pcmcia/config to tell
cardmgr how to identify the card, and which driver(s) need to be
linked up to this card. Check the man page for pcmcia for more
information about the config file format. If you insert an unknown
card, cardmgr will normally record some identification information in
the system log that can be used to construct the config entry. This
information can also be displayed with the ``cardctl ident'' command.
Here is an example of how cardmgr will report an unsupported card in
the system log:
cardmgr[460]: unsupported card in socket 1
cardmgr[460]: product info: "MEGAHERTZ", "XJ2288", "V.34 PCMCIA MODEM"
cardmgr[460]: manfid: 0x0101, 0x1234 function: 2 (serial)
The corresponding entry in /etc/pcmcia/config would be:
card "Megahertz XJ2288 V.34 Fax Modem"
version "MEGAHERTZ", "XJ2288", "V.34 PCMCIA MODEM"
bind "serial_cs"
or using the more compact product ID codes:
card "Megahertz XJ2288 V.34 Fax Modem"
manfid 0x0101, 0x1234
bind "serial_cs"
You can use ``*'' to match strings that don't need to match exactly,
like version numbers. When making new config entries, be careful to
copy the strings exactly, preserving case and blank spaces. Also be
sure that the config entry has the same number of strings as are
reported in the log file.
Beware that you can specify just about any driver for a card, but if
you're just shooting in the dark, there is not much reason to expect
this to be productive. You may get lucky and find that your card is
supported by an existing driver. However, the most likely outcome is
that the driver won't work, and may have unfortunate side effects like
locking up your system. Unlike most ordinary device drivers, which
probe for an appropriate card, the probe for a PCMCIA device is done
by cardmgr, and the driver itself may not do much validation before
attempting to communicate with the device.
After editing /etc/pcmcia/config, you can signal cardmgr to reload the
file with:
kill -HUP `cat /var/run/cardmgr.pid`
If you do set up an entry for a new card, please send me a copy so
that I can include it in the standard config file.
6.2. Adding support for an NE2000-compatible ethernet card
Before you begin: this procedure will only work for simple 16-bit
ethernet cards. Multifunction cards (i.e., ethernet/modem combo
cards) have an extra layer of complexity regarding how the two
functions are integrated, and generally cannot be supported without
obtaining some configuration information from the card vendor. Using
the following procedure for a multifunction card will not be
productive.
First, see if the card is already recognized by cardmgr. Some cards
not listed in SUPPORTED.CARDS are actually OEM versions of cards that
are supported. If you find a card like this, let me know so I can add
it to the list.
If your card is not recognized, follow the instructions in the
``Configuring unrecognized cards'' section to create a config entry
for your card, and bind the card to the pcnet_cs driver. Restart
cardmgr to use the updated config file.
If the pcnet_cs driver says that it is unable to determine your card's
hardware ethernet address, then edit your new config entry to bind the
card to the memory card driver, memory_cs. Restart cardmgr to use the
new updated config file. You will need to know your card's hardware
ethernet address. This address is a series of six two-digit hex
numbers, often printed on the card itself. If it is not printed on
the card, you may be able to use a DOS driver to display the address.
In any case, once you know it, run:
dd if=/dev/mem0a count=20 | od -Ax -t x1
and search the output for your address. Only the even bytes are
defined, so ignore the odd bytes in the dump. Record the hex offset
of the first byte of the address. Now, edit clients/pcnet_cs.c and
find the hw_info structure. You'll need to create a new entry for
your card. The first field is the memory offset. The next three
fields are the first three bytes of the hardware address. The final
field contains some flags for specific card features; to start, try
setting it to 0.
After editing pcnet_cs.c, compile and install the new module. Edit
/etc/pcmcia/config again, and change the card binding from memory_cs
to pcnet_cs. Follow the instructions for reloading the config file,
and you should be all set. Please send me copies of your new hw_info
and config entries.
If you can't find your card's hardware address in the hex dump, as a
method of last resort, it is possible to ``hard-wire'' the address
when the pcnet_cs module is initialized. Edit /etc/pcmcia/config.opts
and add a hw_addr= option, like so:
module "pcnet_cs" opts "hw_addr=0x00,0x80,0xc8,0x01,0x02,0x03"
Substitute your own card's hardware address in the appropriate spot,
of course. Beware that if you've gotten this far, it is very unlikely
that your card is genuinely NE2000 compatible. In fact, I'm not sure
if there are any cards that are not handled by one of the first two
methods.
6.3. PCMCIA floppy interface cards
The PCMCIA floppy interface used in the Compaq Aero and a few other
laptops is not yet supported by this package. The snag in supporting
the Aero floppy is that the Aero seems to use a customized PCMCIA
controller to support DMA to the floppy. Without knowing exactly how
this is done, there isn't any way to implement support under Linux.
If the floppy adapter card is present when an Aero is booted, the Aero
BIOS will configure the card, and Linux will identify it as a normal
floppy drive. When the Linux PCMCIA drivers are loaded, they will
notice that the card is already configured and attached to a Linux
driver, and this socket will be left alone. So, the drive can be used
if it is present at boot time, but the card is not hot swappable.
7. Debugging tips and programming information
7.1. Submitting useful problem reports
The best way to submit reports is to use the online pcmcia-cs forums
or the bug tracker at SourceForge. That way, other people can see
current problems (and fixes or workarounds, if available). Here are
some things that should be included in all bug reports:
<20> Your system brand and model.
<20> All PCMCIA card(s) you are using.
<20> Your Linux kernel version (i.e., ``uname -rv''), and PCMCIA driver
version (i.e., ``cardctl -V'').
<20> Output of 'lspci -v'
<20> Any changes you have made to the startup files in /etc/pcmcia, or
to the PCMCIA startup script.
<20> All PCMCIA-related messages in your system log file. That includes
startup messages, and messages generated when your cards are
configured.
All the PCMCIA modules and the cardmgr daemon send status messages to
the system log. These will usually end up somewhere like
/var/log/messages or /var/log/daemon.log. These files should be the
first place to look when tracking down a problem. When submitting a
bug report, always include the relevant contents of these files. If
you are having trouble finding your system messages, check
/etc/syslog.conf to see how different classes of messages are handled.
Before submitting a bug report, please check to make sure that you are
using an up-to-date copy of the driver package. While it is somewhat
gratifying to read bug reports for things I've already fixed, it isn't
a particularly constructive use of my time.
If you do not have web access, bug reports can be sent to me at
dahinds@users.sourceforge.net. However, I prefer that bug reports be
posted to the pcmcia-cs SourceForge site, so that they can be seen by
others.
7.2. Interpreting kernel trap reports
If your problem involves a kernel fault, the register dump from the
fault is only useful if you can translate the fault address, EIP, to
something meaningful. Recent versions of klogd attempt to translate
fault addresses based on the current kernel symbol map, but this may
not work if the fault is in a module, or if the problem is severe
enough that klogd cannot finish writing the fault information to the
system log.
If a fault is in the main kernel, the fault address can be looked up
in the System.map file. This may be installed in /System.map or
/boot/System.map. If a fault is in a module, the nm command gives the
same information, however, the fault address has to be adjusted based
on the module's load address. Let's say that you have the following
kernel fault:
Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference
current->tss.cr3 = 014c9000, %cr3 = 014c9000
*pde = 00000000
Oops: 0002
CPU: 0
EIP: 0010:[<c2026081>]
EFLAGS: 00010282
The fault address is 0xc2026081. Looking at System.map, we see that
this is past the end of the kernel, i.e., is in a kernel module. To
determine which module, check the output of ``ksyms -m | sort'':
Address Symbol Defined by
c200d000 (35k) [pcmcia_core]
c200d10c register_ss_entry [pcmcia_core]
c200d230 unregister_ss_entry [pcmcia_core]
...
c2026000 (9k) [3c574_cs]
c202a000 (4k) [serial_cs]
So, 0xc2026081 is in the 3c574_cs module, and is at an offset of
0x0081 from the start of the module. We cannot look up this offset in
3c574_cs.o yet: when the kernel loads a module, it inserts a header at
the module load address, so the real start of the module is offset
from the address shown in ksyms. The size of the header varies with
kernel version: to find out the size for your kernel, check a module
that exports symbols (like pcmcia_core above), and compare a symbol
address with nm output for that symbol. In this example,
register_ss_entry is loaded at an offset of 0xc200d10c - 0xc200d000 =
0x010c, while ``nm pcmcia_core.o'' shows the offset as 0x00c0, so the
header size is 0x010c - 0x00c0 = 0x004c bytes.
Back to 3c574_cs, our fault offset is 0x0081, and subtracting the
0x004c header, the real module offset is 0x0035. Now looking at ``nm
3c574_cs.o | sort'', we see:
0000002c d if_names
0000002c t tc574_attach
00000040 d mii_preamble_required
00000041 d dev_info
So, the fault is located in tc574_attach().
In this example, the fault did not cause a total system lockup, so
ksyms could be executed after the fault happened. In other cases, you
may have to infer the module load addresses indirectly. The same
sequence of events will normally load modules in the same order and at
the same addresses. If a fault happens when a certain card is
inserted, get the ksyms output before inserting the card, or with a
different card inserted. You can also manually load the card's driver
modules with insmod and run ksyms before inserting the card.
For more background, see ``man insmod'', ``man ksyms'', and ``man
klogd''. In the kernel source tree, Documentation/oops-tracing.txt is
also relevant. Here are a few more kernel debugging hints:
<20> Depending on the fault, it may also be useful to translate
addresses in the ``Call Trace'', using the same procedure as for
the main fault address.
<20> To diagnose a silent lock-up, try to provoke the problem with X
disabled, since kernel messages sent to the text console will not
be visible under X.
<20> If you kill klogd, most kernel messages will be echoed directly on
the text console, which may be helpful if the problem prevents
klogd from writing to the system log.
<20> To cause all kernel messages to be sent to the console, for 2.2 and
later kernels, if /proc/sys/kernel/printk exists, do:
echo 8 > /proc/sys/kernel/printk
<20> The key combination <RightAlt><ScrLk> prints a register dump on the
text console. This may work even if the system is otherwise
completely unresponsive, and the EIP address can be interpreted as
for a kernel fault.
<20> For 2.2 and later kernels configured with CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ
enabled, various emergency functions are available via special
<Alt><SysRq> key combinations, documented in
Documentation/sysrq.txt in the kernel source tree.
7.3. Low level PCMCIA debugging aids
The PCMCIA modules contain a lot of conditionally-compiled debugging
code. Most of this code is under control of the PCMCIA_DEBUG
preprocessor define. If this is undefined, debugging code will not be
compiled. If set to 0, the code is compiled but inactive. Larger
numbers specify increasing levels of verbosity. Each module built
with PCMCIA_DEBUG defined will have an integer parameter, pc_debug,
that controls the verbosity of its output. This can be adjusted when
the module is loaded, so output can be controlled on a per-module
basis without recompiling.
Your default configuration for syslogd may discard kernel debugging
messages. To ensure that they are recorded, edit /etc/syslog.conf to
ensure that ``kern.debug'' messages are recorded somewhere. See ``man
syslog.conf'' for details.
There are a few register-level debugging tools in the debug_tools/
subdirectory of the PCMCIA distribution. The dump_tcic and dump_i365
utilities generate register dumps for ISA-to-PCMCIA controllers. In
3.1.15 and later releases, dump_i365 is replaced by dump_exca, which
is similar but also works for PCI-to-CardBus bridges. Also new in
3.1.15 for CardBus bridges is the dump_cardbus tool, which interprets
the CardBus-specific registers. These are all most useful if you have
access to a datasheet for the corresponding controller chip. The
dump_cis utility (dump_tuples in pre-3.0.2 distributions) lists the
contents of a card's CIS (Card Information Structure), and decodes
most of the important bits. And the dump_cisreg utility displays a
card's local configuration registers.
The memory_cs memory card driver is also sometimes useful for
debugging problems with 16-bit PC Cards. It can be bound to any card,
and does not interfere with other drivers. It can be used to directly
access any card's attribute memory or common memory. Similarly for
CardBus cards, the memory_cb driver can be bound to any 32-bit card,
to give direct access to that card's address spaces. See the man
pages for more information.
7.4. /proc/bus/pccard
On 2.2 and later kernels, the PCMCIA package will create a tree of
status information under /proc/bus/pccard. Much of the information
can only be interpreted using the data sheets for the PCMCIA host
controller. Its contents may depend on how the drivers were
configured, but may include all or some of the following:
/proc/bus/pccard/{irq,ioport,memory}
If present, these files contain resource allocation information
to supplement the normal kernel resource tables. Recent
versions of the PCMCIA system may obtain additional resource
information from the Plug and Play BIOS if configured to do so.
/proc/bus/pccard/drivers
In recent releases, this lists all currently loaded PCMCIA
client drivers. Unlike /proc/modules, it also lists drivers
that may be statically linked into the kernel.
/proc/bus/pccard/*/info
For each socket, describes that socket's host controller and its
capabilities.
/proc/bus/pccard/*/exca
This contains a dump of a controller's ``ExCA'' Intel i82365sl-
compatible register set.
/proc/bus/pccard/*/{pci,cardbus}
For CardBus bridges, a dump of the bridge's PCI configuration
space, and a dump of the bridge's CardBus configuration
registers.
7.5. Writing Card Services drivers for new cards
The Linux PCMCIA Programmer's Guide is the best documentation for the
client driver interface. The latest version is always available from
projects.sourceforge.net in /pub/pcmcia-cs/doc, or on the web at
<http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net>.
For devices that are close relatives of normal ISA devices, you will
probably be able to use parts of existing Linux drivers. In some
cases, the biggest stumbling block will be modifying an existing
driver so that it can handle adding and removing devices after boot
time. Of the current drivers, the memory card driver is the only
``self-contained'' driver that does not depend on other parts of the
Linux kernel to do most of the dirty work.
In many cases, the largest barrier to supporting a new card type is
obtaining technical information from the manufacturer. It may be
difficult to figure out who to ask, or to explain exactly what
information is needed. However, with a few exceptions, it is very
difficult if not impossible to implement a driver for a card without
technical information from the manufacturer.
I have written a dummy driver with lots of comments that explains a
lot of how a driver communicates with Card Services; you will find
this in the PCMCIA source distribution in clients/dummy_cs.c.
7.6. Guidelines for PCMCIA client driver authors
I have decided that it is not really feasible for me to distribute all
PCMCIA client drivers as part of the PCMCIA package. Each new driver
makes the main package incrementally harder to maintain, and including
a driver inevitably transfers some of the maintenance work from the
driver author to me. Instead, I will decide on a case by case basis
whether or not to include contributed drivers, based on user demand as
well as maintainability. For drivers not included in the core
package, I suggest that driver authors adopt the following scheme for
packaging their drivers for distribution.
Driver files should be arranged in the same directory scheme used in
the PCMCIA source distribution, so that the driver can be unpacked on
top of a complete PCMCIA source tree. A driver should include source
files (in ./modules/), a man page (in ./man/), and configuration files
(in ./etc/). The top level directory should also include a README
file.
The top-level directory should include a makefile, set up so that
``make -f ... all'' and ``make -f ... install'' compile the driver and
install all appropriate files. If this makefile is given an extension
of .mk, then it will automatically be invoked by the top-level
Makefile for the all and install targets. Here is an example of how
such a makefile could be constructed:
# Sample Makefile for contributed client driver
FILES = sample_cs.mk README.sample_cs \
modules/sample_cs.c modules/sample_cs.h \
etc/sample.conf etc/sample etc/sample.opts \
man/sample_cs.4
all:
$(MAKE) -C modules MODULES=sample_cs.o
install:
$(MAKE) -C modules install-modules MODULES=sample_cs.o
$(MAKE) -C etc install-clients CLIENTS=sample
$(MAKE) -C man install-man4 MAN4=sample_cs.4
dist:
tar czvf sample_cs.tar.gz $(FILES)
This makefile uses install targets defined in 2.9.10 and later
versions of the PCMCIA package. This makefile also includes a
``dist'' target for the convenience of the driver author. You would
probably want to add a version number to the final package filename
(for example, sample_cs-1.5.tar.gz). A complete distribution could
look like:
sample_cs.mk
README.sample_cs
modules/sample_cs.c
modules/sample_cs.h
etc/sample.conf
etc/sample
etc/sample.opts
man/sample_cs.4
With this arrangement, when the contributed driver is unpacked, it
becomes essentially part of the PCMCIA source tree. It can make use
of the PCMCIA header files, as well as the machinery for checking the
user's system configuration, and automatic dependency checking, just
like a ``normal'' client driver.
In this example, etc/sample and etc/sample.opts would be the new
driver's configuration scripts (if needed), and etc/sample.conf would
contain any additions to the PCMCIA card configuration file. Starting
with the 3.1.6 release, cardmgr will automatically process any *.conf
files installed in /etc/pcmcia, so installation of contributed drivers
should no longer require hand editing configuration files.
I will accept client drivers prepared according to this specification
and place them in the /pub/pcmcia-cs/contrib directory on
projects.sourceforge.net. The README in this directory will describe
how to unpack a contributed driver.
The client driver interface has not changed much over time, and has
almost always preserved backwards compatibility. A client driver will
not normally need to be updated for minor revisions in the main
package. I will try to notify authors of contributed drivers of
changes that require updates to their drivers.
7.7. Guidelines for Linux distribution maintainers
If your distribution has system configuration tools that you would
like to be PCMCIA-aware, please use the *.opts files in /etc/pcmcia
for your ``hooks.'' These files will not be modified if a user
compiles and installs a new release of the PCMCIA package. If you
modify the main configuration scripts, then a fresh install will
silently overwrite your custom scripts and break the connection with
your configuration tools. Contact me if you are not sure how to write
an appropriate option script, or if you need additional capabilities.
It is helpful for users (and for me) if you can document how your
distribution deviates from the PCMCIA package as described in this
document. In particular, please document changes to the startup
script and configuration scripts. If you send me the appropriate
information, I will include it in the ``Notes about specific Linux
distributions''.
When building PCMCIA for distribution, consider including contributed
drivers that are not part of the main PCMCIA package. For reasons of
maintainability, I am trying to limit the core package size, by only
adding new drivers if I think they are of particularly broad interest.
Other drivers will be distributed separately, as described in the
previous section. The split between integral and separate drivers is
somewhat arbitrary and partly historical, and should not imply a
difference in quality.
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